Oral Corrective Feedback: A Synopsis for Teachers
Corrective feedback (CF) is any type of response or move the teacher makes to warn the learner about the presence of an error (Kartchava, 2019). Oral Corrective Feedback (OCF), specifically, is an oral response to an error that a language learner has made (Oliver & Adams, 2021). According to Ellis (2021), OCF is the most common mode of CF used by teachers to notify students that an error has occurred in their L2 production. OCF is considered an important part of the L2 learning process as it helps learners to compare their utterances with the target language, helping students to “notice the gap” (Oliver & Adams, 2021) between what they are saying and what is correct in the target language. This post considers how OCF is used to indicate an error, profiles the different types of OCF and how often they are used, and explores what the research implies for teachers.
There are different ways that OCF can be used to indicate that an error has been made. First, OCF can be overt, providing the correct form directly. For example, a student might state that “I’m late yesterday.” The teacher might correct the error directly, telling the student “You should say ‘I was late,’ not ‘I’m late. Use the past tense.”. OCF can also be covert, which indicates an error exists without providing the correct form (Ellis, 2021). For instance, the teacher might respond to that same student’s error by asking; for instance, “S: You are late yesterday”, “T: Sorry?”. Here, the correction is not given directly, but the teacher implies that the student should change something about their utterance.
Likewise, when providing OCF, teachers can provide either negative evidence or positive evidence (Oliver & Adams, 2021). Negative evidence means that the teacher provides data about what is not acceptable in the target language. For example, a teacher might say: You cannot say “goed” for the simple past tense of “go.” As for positive evidence, teachers provide information about what is acceptable and possible in the target language. For example, a teacher might say: The simple past tense of “go” is “went.”
While there are different ways that researchers have classified the types of OCF, Lyster and Ranta’s (1997) classification, based on their observations in French immersion classes in Canada, is widely accepted. They denote six types of OCF: recasts, explicit correction, elicitation, metalinguistic cues, repetition, and clarification requests. Then, they organized these six types into two categories: reformulations and prompts (Ranta & Lyster, 2007). Table 1 shows these two categories, the types of OCF included in each category, and examples of each.
Reformulations, which include recasts and explicit correction, “supply learners with both negative and positive evidence” (Oliver & Adams, 2021, p. 192). In Table, 1, the teacher provides the correct answer for the student’s error as a recast, where the teacher repeats what the student has said but with the correct form, and as an explicit correction, where the teacher explicitly states that the utterance was incorrect and then provides the correct form.
Prompts, on the other hand, “provide only negative evidence” (Oliver & Adams, 2021, p. 192). As shown in Table 1, the teacher indicates that there is an error in the student’s utterance, but the learner is left to self-correct. This may be done by eliciting the target form, providing metalinguistic cues as to where the error has been made, repeating the erroneous form back to the student, or asking for clarification. Prompts, then, are when the teacher provides cues that an error has been made, but the act of correction is left to the learner.
Out of these six types, Lyster and Ranta (1997) found that French immersion teachers provided OCF on a majority of students’ errors (62%). Out of the feedback given, recasts were used the most often (55%), followed by elicitation (14%), clarification requests (11%), metalinguistic feedback (8%), explicit correction (7%), and repetition (5%) (Lyster & Ranta, 1997, p. 53). These findings were later confirmed by Brown (2016) in the first comprehensive synthesis of CF classroom studies that included 85 teachers across 11 countries teaching seven target languages (Brown, 2016, p. 445). The analysis showed that teachers use reformulations (66%), specifically recasts (57%), significantly more than prompts (30%).
Are recasts, then, the most effective way for teachers to provide OCF? Lyster and Saito (2010) analysed the effectiveness of recasts, explicit correction, and prompts through a synthesis of 15 published, classroom-based, quasi-experimental studies and considered not only the OCF types used, but also other variables such as the L1 background of the students. They found that while all three types “made a significant impact on L2 learners’ performance” (Lyster & Saito, 2010, p. 289), reinforcing that OCF is wholly positive, prompts were more effective in bringing about learning gains (Lyster & Saito, 2010). This research doesn’t imply, though, that teachers should shy away from one type of OCF in favor of another. OCF is not a one-size-fits-all process. Teachers should seek to employ a variety of OCF types to determine what works best for them and their students in their particular instructional settings.
In summary, OCF is a complex but wholly positive process. By using OCF in their L2 classes, teachers can help their students recognize the difference between their output and the target form. Understanding how OCF indicates errors, the types of OCF, how often OCF is used, and what that implies for teachers will help L2 educators make conscious choices about how to apply OCF in their own classrooms.
Kelsey Ulrich-Verslycken
Lana HajHamid
Fereshteh Kaffafi Azar
References
Brown, D. (2016). The type and linguistic foci of oral corrective feedback in the L2 classroom: A meta-analysis. Language Teaching Research, 20(4), 436-458.
Ellis, R. (2021). Explicit and implicit oral corrective feedback. In H. Nassaji & E. Kartchava (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Corrective Feedback in Second Language Learning and Teaching (pp. 341-363). Cambridge University Press.
Kartchava, E. (2019). What is Corrective Feedback? In Noticing oral corrective feedback in the second language classroom: background and evidence (pp. 9–37). Lexington Books.
Long, M. (1996). The Role of the Linguistic Environment in Second Language Acquisition. In W. Ritchie & T. Bhatia (eds.), Handbook of Second Language Acquisition (pp.469-506). Academic Press.
Lyster, R., & Ranta, L. (1997). Corrective feedback and learner uptake. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19(1), 37–66. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263197001034
Lyster, R., & Saito, K. (2010). Oral feedback in classroom SLA: A meta-analysis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 32(2), 265–302. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263109990520
Oliver, R. & Adams, R. (2021). Oral corrective feedback. In H. Nassaji & E. Kartchava (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Corrective Feedback in Second Language Learning and Teaching (pp.187-206). Cambridge University Press.
Ranta, L., & Lyster, R. (2007). A cognitive approach to improving immersion students' oral language abilities: The awareness-practice-feedback sequence. In Practice in a second language: perspectives from applied linguistics and cognitive psychology (pp. 141–160). Cambridge University Press.