ISSN (Print): 2328-3734, ISSN (Online): 2328-3696, ISSN (CD-ROM): 2328-3688 American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences AIJRHASS 15-575; © 2015, AIJRHASS All Rights Reserved Page 159 AIJRHASS is a refereed, indexed, peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary and open access journal published by International Association of Scientific Innovation and Research (IASIR), USA (An Association Unifying the Sciences, Engineering, and Applied Research) Available online at http://www.iasir.net Role of Direct and Indirect Corrective Feedback in improvement of Hindi students’ writing skills Mohammad Jalaluddin Fulbright Scholar at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. PhD Student in the Department of English at Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh (U.P.) India. I. Introduction Effectiveness of the corrective written feedback is a really important issue to make students proficient in the foreign languages. Sometimes foreign language instructors become disappointed with students’ results and per- formance in the target language. But it is also true that the methods of providing feedback to the students affect their performance in the target language. The direct and indirect corrective feedback are the most common methods used by the instructors to respond, comment and correct grammatical errors on students’ written works. Direct corrective feedback is provided when the teacher writes the correct form on the student’s paper, while indirect feedback is provided when the teacher indicates the location of the error on the paper by underlining, highlighting or circling it without provid- ing the correct form (Lee, 2004). Several studies have been conducted in this area to know the impact and effectiveness of the direct and indirect feedback on students’ writing ability but it is still not possible to adjudge which feedback is the most beneficial and effective for improvement of students’ writing skills. The study intends to know the attitude of non-native of Hindi learners about direct and indirect corrective feedback at Yale university. This research discovered that the direct corrective feedback is more helpful for students to improve their writing skills in Hindi language. II. Direct Feedback The teacher provides the student with the correct form (Lalande, 1982 and Robb et al. 1986). Direct corrective feedback has the advantage that it provides learners with explicit guidance about how to correct their errors. (Rod Ellis). Ferris and Roberts (2001) suggest that direct corrective feedback is probably better than indirect corrective feedback with students having low levels of proficiency in writing. A recent study by Sheen (2007) indicates that direct corrective feedback can be effective in promoting acquisition of specific grammatical fea- tures. Guenette (2007) defines direct feedback that it refers to the teacher’s correction of errors. According to Lee (2004), direct or explicit feedback occurs when the teacher picks out errors and gives the correct forms. (Lan Anh, 2008, PP 126-127). There are some types of errors that might prove that direct feedback is better than indirect feedback. For example, if student writes ‘I goed to the school’ instead of ‘I went to the school’ and teacher has introduced only the formation of regular past tense verb rules in the class but he has not taught yet irregular past tense verbs. So in such a situation it is best to provide the direct feedback with explanation of the unknown concept. III. Indirect Feedback: The teacher indicates that an error exists but does not provide the correction. Lanlande (1982) suggests that indi- rect feedback is indeed more effective in enabling students to correct their errors but others, for example, Ferris and Roberts’ own study found no difference between direct and indirect corrective feedback. Guenette (2007) states that indirect feedback mentions the teacher’s indication of errors by underlining, highlighting or coding them and then letting learners do the corrections. According to Lee (2004), indirect correction refers to situa- tions when the teacher marks that errors have been made but does not supply the correct forms, requiring the learners to diagnose and correct their errors. Further, she distinguishes indirect feedback strategies with a code Abstract: The direct and indirect corrective feedback are the most common strategies of written feedback used by the teachers to correct the mistakes of the students of their written works. Various researches have been done to know the effectiveness of the direct and indirect corrective feedback in students’ writing ability but still no any rigid result has been found to prove the effectiveness of either. This paper looked the atti- tudes of Hindi learner’s towards direct and indirect corrective feedback for improvement of their writing ability in Hindi. The study revealed that the direct feedback is more helpful to correct their errors and to make them understand the type of the errors. Keywords: Direct feedback, indirect feedback, effectiveness, attitudes, improvement