This article provides an overview of research that has investigated the effectiveness of written corrective feedback (WCF) on ESL student writing. In doing so, it highlights a number of shortcomings in the design of some studies and explains what needs to be done in future research so that answers to the issues that have been raised can be effectively addressed. The article reports on a two-month study (with 144 international and migrant ESL students in Auckland, New Zealand) that investigated the extent to which different WCF options (direct corrective feedback, written and oral meta-linguistic explanation; direct corrective feedback and written meta-linguistic explanation; direct corrective feedback only; no corrective feedback) help students improve their accuracy in the use of two functional uses of the English article system (referential indefinite `a' and referential definite `the'). The study found (1) that students who received all three WCF options outperformed those who did not receive WCF, (2) that their level of accuracy was retained over seven weeks and (3) that there was no difference in the extent to which migrant and international students improved the accuracy of their writing as a result of WCF.
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