摘要：It has been debated whether teachers should treat students' grammatical errors insecond language writing instruction (Truscott, 1996, 1999, 2010; Ferris, 1999, 2004,2010).Severalmeta -analyseshaveinvestigatedcorrectioneffects(e.g.,Russell&Spada,2006;Truscott,2007).Theirfindings,however,havebeenconflicting.Arecenttrendtodistinguish specific grammar error types from one another to evaluate correctioneffectshasattractedmuchattentioninwrittenfeedbackliterature(Bitchener&Knoch,2010ab;Sheen, Wright & Moldawa, 2009). The present meta -analysis, following therecent trend, attempts toassess differenttypesoffocused direct correctioneffectsonlearners'acquisitionoftheEnglisharticlesystem.BasedonTruscott's(2007)inclusionandexclusioncriteria,sixandfiveeffectsizesareextractedfordirectcorrectiontypeand metalinguistic explanation type separately from seven focused feedback studies.Both direct correction and metalinguistic explanation have large positive effects onlearners'abilitytoaccuratelyuseEnglisharticlesintheirwritingsintermsoflong -termlearning.Thissuggeststhatdirectcorrectionmaybesufficientforstudents'acquisitionof English articles. Studies to correct other error types should be conducted in thefuture
