Effectiveness of Written Corrective Feedback on Syntactic Errors of Graduate Students' Abstract Translation

This paper examines the differential effect of three types of written corrective feedback on syntactic errors in graduate students' thesis abstract translation through 4-month correction experiment with 82 graduate students in Jilin Agricultural University as subjects. Four groups were formed in the early stage (written corrective feedback combined with written and oral meta-linguistic explanation; written corrective feedback and written meta-linguistic explanation; written corrective feedback only; the control group), all groups of students were provided with one semester of Science and Technology Thesis Writing and Translation Course, and they were required to translate five pieces of agriculture-related thesis abstracts from Chinese to English during the researching process, finally their test scores were comparatively analyzed. The results show that written corrective feedback targeting syntactic errors in thesis abstract translation improved graduate students' English syntactic accuracy, especially when the written and oral meta-linguistic explanation feedback was provided.