February 2024 – Volume 27, Number 4
https://doi.org/10.55593/ej.27108a10
Robert Weekly
University of Nottingham Ningbo
<Robert.Weeklynottingham.edu.cn>
Andrew Pollard
Charles Darwin University
<andrew.pollardcdu.edu.au>
Abstract
The practice of Corrective Feedback (CF), which is situated within a Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Paradigm, is currently positioned towards an accuracy-orientated delivery based on native speaker norms. This is despite the recognition in different areas of linguistic research that there is considerable variation in the way that English is spoken around the world. This paper argues that the epistemological assumptions and methodological approaches to investigate CF within an SLA paradigm have various underlying weaknesses that undermine research findings. These findings purport to provide support for an accuracy-orientated CF in the English classroom. However, it is suggested in this paper that a meaning-orientated CF would be more reflective and beneficial for students given the transformative changes that have occurred to English over the past 30 years. This perspective is discussed in relation to one teacher’s approach to CF who participated in a larger project which examined CF conducted in a British-Sino University.
Keywords: Corrective Feedback, Critique; Methodologies, epistemologies, English as a Lingua Franca
‘Errors’ in English Language Teaching
Globalization has contributed to the natural development of Englishes that do not conform to British or American ‘native’ Englishes, and therefore it seems necessary to appraise new approaches to English teaching. This perhaps also requires changes to existing methodologies and theoretical orientations, as they are currently unable to examine the complexity of English language in the classroom. Errors have underpinned many facets of English Language Teaching (ELT) and the perception of learners’ error production, by English language teachers, is embedded within the Second Language Acquisition (SLA) paradigm, which measures spoken production against native speaker norms where divergence from these norms results in negative linguistic assessment. Further, teachers tend to accept that a spoken interlanguage exists with the potential for fossilization when an error is deemed to have transitioned from intermittent to persistent. However, fossilization remains a vague concept, with researchers unable to delineate fossilization and stabilization or explain why it occurs in certain learners or against specific language features and not others (Han & Odlin, 2006b; Long, 2003, 2015). Nonetheless, these critical observations are often overlooked when reviewing students’ spoken errors.
The framing of these perceptions avoids engaging with the sociolinguistic realities of the English language. Research in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and World Englishes (WE) have undermined a structuralist understanding of language. Countless studies have highlighted the reality that fluent and proficient multilingual English speakers in non-anglophone countries do not conform to a native model of English, which undermines the 20th century construct of fossilization (Jenkins et al., 2018; Kirkpatrick, 2020; Nelson et al., 2020). Despite the overwhelming evidence that key concepts and constructs in SLA and ELT have reduced merit in this increasingly globalised world (García, 2009; Larsen-Freeman, 2006; Larsen-Freeman, 2016; Larsen-Freeman, 2018; Ortega, 2018, 2019; Rose & Galloway, 2019), many SLA researchers persist with their existing research objectives in examining Corrective Feedback (CF). This paper critiques current approaches to researching the effectiveness of CF, how this is applied in the classroom, and posits how a reorientation could align more closely with sociolinguistic realities of English. A repositioning to a meaning-orientated CF is not to suggest that an accuracy-orientated CF has no value in many contexts but rather it is to reverse the current positions of meaning and accuracy and to foreground meaning. While the concept of meaning has been discussed extensively in CF, this continues to orientate to a perspective of language as being inherently inaccurate, and use of a meaning-orientated CF is viewed as pedagogical device for certain classroom interactions. A meaning-orientated CF in both teaching and research would serve to promote an understanding of speakers as successful communicators. In practical terms, a meaning-orientated CF would require teachers to make decisions about their interpretation of what a learner says and whether communication has been successfully achieved and consider whether the utterances would be interpretable by others within the myriad of different contexts in which the learner may find themselves in future encounters.
This paper presents a review of current approaches to CF which is predominantly situated within an SLA paradigm. However, we find continuing this approach to be slightly problematic as the findings have become saturated with seemingly limited further insights to be found. Moreover, there has been minimal response in CF research to changing social conditions. The purpose of this paper is twofold. The first purpose is to challenge CF researchers in considering their current approaches, and to implement empirical research which can test the applicability of a meaning-orientated CF. This would provide support for teachers who currently enact meaning-orientated CF. Secondly, the paper also encourages English language teachers to consider their current CF practices, the context in which they teach and whether meaning-orientated CF would be more beneficial for students, and acceptable to various stakeholders. While we provide some data from a study at Sino-Foreign University in China, it could not be said that this data reports concrete findings, per se, but rather that the data is used to support the main theoretical and methodological arguments presented in the paper.
Understanding ‘Errors’
It has become increasingly complex to determine what can be considered an error due to the spread and diversification of English alongside the emergence of multiple norms in different contexts and suggesting that perhaps SLA approaches to CF have become anachronistic. Bamgbose (1998) suggests five factors, namely demographic, geographic, authority, codification, and acceptability, to determine whether a language form could be regarded as an innovation rather than an error. Codification would involve the documentation of different language forms in formal documents, such as dictionaries or grammar guide texts, but as Bamgbose (1998, p. 4) notes, the ‘dearth of codification’ mitigates against the ‘establishment of endonormative standards in non-native Englishes’. While there is potential for this process to occur in some regions, this is more limited in contexts where English is learnt in foreign language classrooms with more ‘traditional’ or ‘prescriptive’ targets. Moreover, while the codification of English varieties in the outer circle may enable intelligibility at a regional level, it may not facilitate communication across diverse varieties, such as communication between, for example, a French English speaker and an Indian English speaker (Modiano, 2009). Therefore, a transition is required that positions English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) learners as ELF speakers, regardless of their location inside or outside the classroom. As observed by Hamid et al. (2014), what teachers perceive to be errors in the classroom, drawing from an SLA orientation, may not be errors in WE, indicating that it has become essential in ELT pedagogy to distinguish between errors and variational features. The authors note that teachers tend to provide mixed judgments on L2 features, with some tolerance in relation to lexical divergence, but divergence in grammar tends to be viewed negatively with limited regard to intelligibility.
Prevailing views within ELF research have tended to align with Cogo and Dewey’s (2012, p. 78) assertion that ‘deciding what constitutes an error is not only a complex issue, it is possibly not an ELF compatible way of thinking about language’. Therefore, it is important for English language teachers to be sensitive to the local context and use intelligibility as a measure when making an assessment about students’ spoken language (Fang, 2019). Although ELF-focused teacher training programs have shown that pre-service teachers have modified their beliefs about CF practices (Rose & Galloway, 2019; Sifakis, 2014; Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2015), these programs are still in their infancy, and traditional approaches to CF remain dominant. Perhaps more importantly, ELF researchers have tended to avoid directly challenging CF research within SLA, which has shown that CF practices do have an impact on modifying students’ language towards a native English speaker (NES) variety of English (Basturkmen & Fu, 2021; Li, 2010; Li & Vuono, 2019; Lyster & Saito, 2010; Mackey & Goo, 2007).
Theory and Practice
CF research in language teaching has been governed by theoretical assertions of the validity for teachers to provide CF, which are currently driven by an interactionist/constructivist theoretical stance in SLA (Abbuhl, 2021). In this respect, Long’s (1996) interaction hypothesis, which incorporates the input hypothesis (Krashen, 1985), the output hypothesis (Swain, 1985, 2005) and the noticing hypothesis (Schmidt, 1990), have served to solidify the importance given to CF in the language classroom. Long (1996, 2015) asserts that CF is important for language development in that it provides evidence about the language to students. For instance, through peer and teacher interaction the learner may be able to notice the differences between their interlanguage and the target norm. This is supported through the recognition that negotiation of meaning plays a role in L2 development, particularly when this is initiated by CF that involves interaction, as it ‘connects input, internal learner capacities, particularly selective attention, and output in productive ways’ (Long, 1996, pp. 451-452). However, while Long (1996, 2015) argues that negotiation of meaning contributes to language development, not all CF types include negotiation of meaning, which implies that the focus of a large proportion of teachers’ CF practices may be of less value. Approaches to CF have been partly reflective of theoretical trends in SLA, such as how behaviourism supports the audio-lingual method and the aim to avoid errors (Larsen-Freeman, 2019). Current CF practices are orientated towards SLA theories of social constructivism and sociocultural theory (Abbuhl, 2021; Nassaji, 2021), but a CF orientation which prioritises meaning would be more aligned with usage-based/emergent grammar theories, where grammar structures are not considered pre-ordained or innate, but instead ‘emerge from the statistical regularities of form meaning correspondence in usage’ (Larsen-Freeman, 2019, p. 102).
A lot of research has been invested in identifying different delivery types of CF and measuring their relative effectiveness. Six CF types were identified by Lyster and Ranta (1997) and from this demarcation, a more comprehensive framework spanning prompts and reformulations along a cline of implicit-explicit has been developed (Lyster et al., 2013; Ranta & Lyster, 2007). This framework includes the five CF prompt types of clarification request, repetition, paralinguistic signal, elicitation, and metalinguistic clue. Similarly, four CF reformulation types have been labelled: conversational recast, didactic recast, explicit correction, and explicit correction with metalinguistic explanation. Perhaps one consequence of the adoption of this framework in CF studies is how it may encourage an approach to categorise CF by their explicitness or implicitness. However, as Ellis (2021) notes, the degree of implicitness and explicitness of these different CF types should be seen as being on a continuum and is affected by various factors such as paralinguistic features and intonation in delivery, which Ellis (2021) argues, undermines the value of dividing CF according to type of delivery.
CF practices are unlikely to be distinguished based on whether the delivery is meaning- or accuracy-orientated, as being situated within an SLA framework all CF is based on accuracy in relation to perceptions of native speaker norms. However, it would not be possible to classify CF based on whether the delivery is meaning or non-meaning based, because it is not always straightforward to identify whether the CF provided by the teacher is based on meaning or accuracy. Even clarification requests, depending on their delivery, may be used to initiate uptake by students when the utterance is understood by the teacher. Consequently, it is not always possible to determine what initiated the CF or whether both accuracy and meaning contributed to the teacher’s CF practice, or to what degree each contributed. Moreover, not all teacher-driven CF involves an independent CF type and may include a clarification request which could be followed by further CF based on accuracy, adding further difficulties to understand the reasons for the teacher providing CF in the first instance.
In this sense the underpinnings of CF research appear to be founded in an understanding of language standards that were codified prior to the 19th century (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007). While positive empirical evidence does exist and indicates the potential of CF in assisting students’ language development and awareness (Basturkmen & Fu, 2021; Li, 2010; Mackey & Goo, 2007), this positive evidence is often indicative of the perception that students’ language should align with a prescribed language standard. However, these language standards have been challenged by both WE and ELF research, and further undermined by critical linguistics, multilingualism, and usage-based linguistics in SLA (Canagarajah, 2013; Larsen-Freeman, 2018; Li, 2017; Ortega, 2018; Pennycook, 2021). With these considerations in mind, and rather than analysing how teachers are attending to or reacting to ‘errors’, as is currently employed in an accuracy-orientated CF approach, it now seems essential to place value on a meaning-orientated CF approach. This engagement with sociolinguistic realities of English can be leveraged to critically examine the epistemologies and methodologies underpinning CF research in ELT. Moreover, a meaning-orientated CF approach would contribute to repositioning the focus on how the student is using the language and the degree of communicative efficacy.
Variables for Consideration and Control
While there are indications that CF provides a positive role, there are multiple variables spanning the ‘degree of explicitness, type of interlocutor, and target grammar structure’ (García Mayo & Alcón Soler, 2013, p. 224), individual learner factors, affective variables, and contextual setting (Ellis, 2021; Goo & Takeuchi, 2021; Rassaei, 2022) that will impact on the effectiveness of CF. When assessing potential variational factors, it is necessary to consider the following variables in Table 1.
Table 1. Overview of Variables Related to CF Research
Item |
Description |
Research context | Classroom, laboratory |
Research setting | ESL, EFL, English for Academic Purposes, English Medium Instruction |
CF delivery variables | Timing, frequency, quantity, mode |
Linguistic feature targeted | Articles, past present, pronunciation, etc. |
Number of linguistic features targeted in a CF turn | Single, multiple |
Source of CF | Teacher, peer |
Length of treatment | 2 days, 3 weeks, etc. |
The type of CF | Recast, clarification request, etc. |
Teacher variables | Beliefs, experience, training etc. |
Individual learner variables | Gender, status, L1, age, literacy in L2, learner aptitude, memory, motivation and anxiety |
Learner response | Learner’s ability to notice, interpretation and acceptance of CF |
The multitude of variables which overlap and intersect makes investigating CF problematic and nullifies the ability for other researchers to replicate the study, or be able to make concrete recommendations for the classroom context. For example, as a consequence of the frequency of recasts used by teachers due to their supposed implicitness and being commensurate with a CLT approach (Loewen, 2012), recasts have been the prevailing focus of study by SLA researchers, in both laboratory and classroom settings. However, it has also been shown that recasts are on an implicit to explicit continuum (Ellis, 2021), and therefore studies which purport to demonstrate the effectiveness of recasts, may not be replicated in the reality of the classroom. For example, laboratory settings have shown that recasts can be effective, where it is posited that the lower cognitive load through task repetition and greater explicitness may assist in targeting noticing (Lee & Lyster, 2016; Lyster et al., 2013; Mackey & Goo, 2007; Rassaei, 2022; Sheen, 2008; Trofimovich et al., 2007). In this respect, Ellis et al. (2006) and Sheen (2008) both maintain that language change can be effected through targeted CF on a single structure. However, the continual targeting of a single language feature is not a feasible approach in the reality of a classroom setting (Doughty & Varela, 1998; Han, 2002).
In the classroom, for a recast to be effective it must be interpreted as CF by the student, requiring students to notice the difference between their language and the teacher’s (Abbuhl, 2021; Egi, 2007; Ellis, 2021; Ellis et al., 2006; Schmidt, 1990). The importance of noticing for language development has been observed in several studies, because what learners notice in input might become intake for learning (Loewen, 2012; Mackey, 2006; Rassaei, 2013; Shegar et al., 2013). However, the nature of recasts can undermine students’ ability to recognise it as a correction, and in some instances, teachers are not cognitively providing a CF recast, but are instead using it as a pragmatic discursive strategy. Consequently, Rassaei (2022) argues that recasts may be more effective in foreign language contexts, rather than second language learning contexts, which have a more communicative prioritisation. It could be further argued that recasts are not CF, but a functional communicative device observed in pragmatics, conversation analysis and ELF (Clift, 2016; Cogo & Dewey, 2012). Additionally, the degree of effectiveness of recasts is reliant on the level of readiness of the student to employ the CF to their output (Goo & Mackey, 2013; Han, 2002; Lee, 2013; Loewen, 2012; Lyster et al., 2013; Sheen, 2008; Trofimovich et al., 2007). Therefore, in situations where ‘interlocutors share a joint attentional focus, and when the learner already has prior comprehension of at least part of the message’, recasts can facilitate form-function mapping (Long, 2015, p. 55). As evident in existing research, numerous conditions need to be present for recasts to be an effective tool in the classroom, not only questioning their continued focus in SLA research, but also their dominance in the English language classroom.
The brief discussion above considers only a few of the variables that can impact on the effectiveness of CF, and therefore for SLA researchers to believe that they can control the multitude of variables seems idealistic. The state of the field suggests that the continuation of conducting research in an area where no definitive conclusion can be determined raises cause for review. This is reflected in the number and range of limitations that are provided at the end of CF papers. For example, Li and Iwashita (2021) highlight that they are unable to determine if the improvement of the experimental group over the control group was due to CF or additional classes. In addition, it is noted that the teacher used a range of CF rather than just recasts and negotiated prompts, which were the intended CF strategy for the study, and there was an imbalance of CF on the target structures of past tense and questions forms. The authors also note weaknesses in their testing instruments. These limitations would seem to undermine the findings of the research. Li (2018) lists four limitations and Kim (2021) lists five limitations all of which could possibly have been anticipated in the research design, because CF research is flawed in its current approach due to the multitude of variables that need to be controlled. The authors from these three studies inevitably suggest that more research is needed, though the result would be the same with limitations and more research needed to fill voids. Often in CF studies, limitations are predictable albeit unpreventable, but are used as a tool to mitigate against the weaknesses in the research, rather than constituting reflection on the study. After 40 years and a significant volume of research all that can be said for certain is that CF may have an impact on learners’ language production determined by context and individual circumstance. While there has been an increasing volume of research which evaluates the role of teacher’s CF beliefs (Dilāns, 2016; Ha & Murray, 2020; Weekly et al., 2022) there is less consideration of how CF research interconnects with language policies, classroom content, and the extent to which researchers are able to access English language classrooms across contexts to measure and rationalise CF practices. While these factors are not explicitly connected with CF, they are reflective of current sociolinguistic realities that require consideration to add currency and value to the domain.
Corrective Feedback Methodology
Methodological approaches to examine CF effectiveness are also relatively consistent. There has been a tendency for CF studies to be conducted over a short period of time such as three days (Mackey, 2006), four days (Rassaei, 2013; Shegar et al., 2013) or two, one-hour sessions across one week (Thomas, 2018). This approach to the study of CF has obvious limitations and is unable to demonstrate long-term efficacy, and therefore several authors have argued for the need to assess the long-term effects of CF (Abbuhl, 2021; Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Rassaei, 2013; Rezaei et al., 2011; Sheen, 2007). Some attempts have been made to study CF over an extended period such as Zhao and Ellis (2020), with short tasks taking place over three weeks alongside their normal classroom activities, an immediate test occurring in the fourth week, and delayed post-test in week 9. While the results indicate the differences between the different groups of learners, it remains tentative that these can be explicitly linked to the tasks performed by the different groups, given the extended period and potential for language development outside of these tasks.
Alongside the methodological observations noted above, researchers usually target one, two or three target structures in attempts to establish control of the setting and to be able to measure the effect. However, it is not possible to measure the same structure over an extended period and it is not reflective of a classroom environment. Importantly, if the study examines one type of CF, the extended use or non-use of this CF could be considered disruptive to students’ progress who may not wish to participate in such an experiment. Consequently, the perceived necessity to control the variables means that it is difficult to conduct meaningful long-term studies of CF. In addition, there is an assumption in this approach that different language features can be so easily isolated from each other. The successful treatment on one or two features will inevitably depend on the surrounding features of the language, including lexico-grammar, pronunciation, and pragmatics, as language is a complex system (Larsen-Freeman, 2011, 2018).
A further issue with CF studies is the use of quantitative statistical analysis to compare the results of pre-tests and post-tests of the students as a class (Rassaei, 2013). The studies usually use a post-positivist epistemology using control groups that either receive CF or not, or receive a different type of CF to measure efficacy (Ellis, 2007; Han, 2002; Lee & Lyster, 2016; Mackey, 2006; Rassaei, 2013; Sheen, 2007; Thomas, 2018; Zhao & Ellis, 2020). However, it is difficult to effectively control the learning that is taking place even if the teaching is controlled. Moreover, these studies are comparing two sets of learners from different classes and therefore it is questionable whether it is possible to achieve absolute consistency between learners. A more effective methodological approach to assess the efficacy of CF would be to assess individual students’ progress, and a detailed analysis of which students were recipients of CF. Finally, some studies, such as Rassaei (2013), Li et al. (2016) and Thomas (2018), also incorporate grammatical judgement tests or written tests as part of the analysis, though these tests require different processing skills to speaking and therefore, raise questions relating to variables and validity. As Basturkmen and Fu (2021) highlight, oral and written tests access different aspects of an individuals’ knowledge of the structure, and therefore caution should be applied when utilizing written tests in an oral corrective feedback study. This also interacts with notions that different cognitive processes are associated with different skills.
CF studies have also predominantly focused on grammatical structures (Han, 2002; Nassaji, 2013; Rassaei, 2013; Shegar et al., 2013). These studies have included questions, plurals and past tense (Mackey, 2006), articles (Rassaei, 2013), third person singular and do/auxiliary wh- questions (Shegar et al., 2013; Thomas, 2018; Zhao & Ellis, 2020), possessive determiners, lexical intransitive verbs, transitive verbs followed by determiners (Ammar & Spada, 2006; Trofimovich et al., 2007) past tense reference, conditionals (Doughty & Varela, 1998), past tense -ed, comparative -er (Ellis, 2007), the past passive (Li et al., 2016), past tense and question forms (Li, 2018) and relative clauses (Kim, 2021). There has been less research on vocabulary, pronunciation, and limited research on pragmatics or discourse, all of which, arguably, have a greater impact on intelligibility. This overt concentration on grammatical structures reflects the preoccupation with grammar in SLA (Lyster et al., 2013)(Lyster et al., 2013), and perhaps one reason for this is that grammar is perceived as being easier to control and monitor. As highlighted by Jenkins (2000) however, a major cause for communicative breakdown connects with pronunciation which would suggest that teachers should be primarily concerned with CF related to pronunciation. This was evident in our current study, where the proportion of corrections for grammar among the four teachers was lower than corrections for vocabulary or pronunciation. Moreover, CF studies suggest that the simplistic structures, such as regular past tense –ed articles or third person singular are more resistant to CF (Ellis, 2007; Long et al., 1998; Sheen, 2007). There is little consideration that students may have established norms, or that the feature could be a marker of identity (Jenkins, 2007; Kirkpatrick, 2007; Kohn, 2022; Seidlhofer, 2011), which may contribute to their resistance to CF.
CF studies often do not fully consider the sociolinguistic environment of where the study is situated and whether the target structure is valid for the context. If the target structure in a study is a recognised feature of the students’ variety of English, then CF could prove to be ineffectual. The sociolinguistic environment is neglected by CF researchers, in terms of considering the target structure social value, and the potential language development of participants outside the classroom during the treatment period. Thus, the theoretical orientation of CF in SLA suggests that there is an extensive focus on language as a cognitive process without equal consideration given to its social dimension.
Epistemological Problems with Corrective Feedback
Most CF studies are framed within the concept of interlanguage (Abbuhl, 2021; Basturkmen & Fu, 2021; Doughty & Varela, 1998; Ellis, 2022; Ellis et al., 2006; Oliver & Adams, 2021; Rahimi & Zhang, 2016; Schmidt, 2001; Sheen, 2008), though as both Jenkins (2007) and Seidlhofer (2011) argue, comparing learners’ multilingual English language forms to a monolingual native target is misguided. Interlanguage is also associated with another SLA concept, fossilization, which is understood as the involuntary long-term cessation of interlanguage (Han, 2013; Larsen-Freeman, 2006).
However, fossilization has come to be used as an opaque umbrella term deployed by teachers to detail perceived progress stagnation in learners (Han & Odlin, 2006a). As both Han (2013) and Long (2003) argue, not every feature of a learners’ language ‘fossilizes’, implying that there is a cognitive mechanism that could simultaneously apply and not apply to different language structures, freezing one grammatical feature in place while allowing another feature to continue developing towards a normative target. Ultimately, it is argued that while fossilization should be present in underlining both native and non-native language, it is only correlated with non-native speakers (Larsen-Freeman, 2006). Working alongside these assertions, and a question that remains unanswered is why some learners experience fossilization, while others do not.
Nevertheless, several SLA authors, such as Rezaei et al. (2011, p. 26), use fossilization to promote the importance of CF as ‘leaving students’ errors might lead to the fossilization of ill-formed structures’. This ideological construction in SLA that if errors go unaddressed, they will become fixed is reflected in the beliefs of teachers and students (Weekly et al., 2022), and that these fossilized structures will have a negative impact on any forthcoming oral test of the students’ English. The washback effect of international oral exams which are governed either implicitly or explicitly by NES norms (Jenkins & Leung, 2017, 2019) promote an ideology that only the fixed structures of NES are accurate. However, errors which are identified in comparison to NES norms fail to identify the sociolinguistic realities of learners’ exposure and therefore researchers must reconsider targets in non-monolithic terms and as always moving (Hall, 2017; Larsen-Freeman, 2006, 2018). Despite several authors questioning the value of the NES/NNES dichotomy in relation to ELT, its ideological connection to interlanguage and fossilization ensures that it retains an iconic position and tends to be used liberally in CF studies with the implication that the native model is superior and the natural target (Abbuhl, 2021; Ellis, 2022; Kim, 2021; Li & Iwashita, 2021; Oliver & Adams, 2021; Trofimovich et al., 2007). Approaching CF studies with clear acknowledgment of the sociolinguistic realities provides the means for a more accurate reflection of how the function of the English classroom should contribute to students’ development in line with communicative efficacy drivers informed by the role of English in the world.
A Study of CF Approaches and Practices in a Sino-British University
To highlight the points discussed in the article we draw on three small sections of data from a study conducted at a Sino-British University in China in the 2018/19 academic year. The study focused on four teachers, who were selected through their responses to short questionnaire, and their respective listening and speaking classes. These classes ran for 3 hours each week across the 11-week Autumn Semester. The data presented is drawn from one teacher, Harold (pseudonym), who has 15 years of English language teaching experience. We outlined the study to students by visiting each teacher’s class and followed informed consent procedures. During the study, the teachers carried a digital recorder to document classroom interaction, with 67 hours of classroom recordings being collected between week 3 and week 11. Student group interviews were conducted in weeks 3-4. Individual interviews with the majority of the students, and the four teachers were conducted in week 11. The focus of the classroom recording analysis was on student-produced error identification, CF provision type and/or omission, and whether student uptake or repair was present. For more detailed information about the study including how informed consent was acquired from both teachers and students please refer to Weekly et al. (2022).
Harold tends to approach CF from a meaning-orientated perspective where discourse is viewed as a whole, which was evident in both the interviews and classroom observation. Harold stated in the interviews that he is unsure of the effectiveness of CF and does not wish to interrupt the communication. Instead, Harold focuses predominantly on correcting pronunciation and vocabulary/word forms as these interfere with meaning and tends to use clarification requests. Some of Harold’s CF beliefs about language are evident in his approach to CF in the following three short extracts from the classroom observations. However, it is also important to note that there was not an exact correlation between Harold’s stated beliefs, approaches, and practices. Although Harold described clarification request as his preferred use of CF, in classroom practices didactic recasts were more dominant. It is also important to highlight that of the four teachers in the study, Harold had the lowest percentage of CF for identified errors at 31.1%, and also used the highest number of didactic recasts as a CF strategy at 64%. Moreover, though Harold stated that he was more inclined to provide CF on pronunciation and vocabulary errors, he tends to correct pronunciation and grammar errors.
Extract 1 Harold: S1: Harold: S2: Harold: |
Yeah (.) the artists (.) what about the artists Make music So the person making the music (.) what happened to them (.) what did she say (.) what about it (.) The right of artists Okay (.) alright so the right belongs to artists (.) yeah (.) and music belongs to them (.) yeah (.) that’s good |
Extract 2 Harold: s3: Harold: s3: Harold: s3: Harold: |
Any more things Maybe they can’t repair my parents They can’t repair My parents my family Robots cannot repair Yeah (.) no (.) replace Oh replace I see yeah okay fair enough |
Extract 3 S1: Harold: S1: Harold: S1: Harold: S1: Harold: |
And his work is more profit and er:: anti-war and anti er anti-capitalism something like that Yeah anti (.) anti-capitalism Other people thought he just just er::: care about the loses money erm::: some Yep So Didn’t sell out He didn’t think that for his work that it would market value and then he will come through er er so he wants @@@ Yep good that’s good that’s good |
Throughout the study, Harold did not provide a significant amount of CF, especially compared to the other teachers, and instead approached monitoring in a more discoursal conversational way. When CF is provided it is usually in the form of didactic recasts, as in the first extract. There are two errors in the first extract, verb form, and preposition (highlighted in bold) and though both receive CF treatment (highlighted in italics), CF here appears to be delivered unconsciously, not with an intention to provide the correct form, but instead to maintain and move forward a conversational turn. In the second extract, S3 makes an error with word choice, and on this occasion, it leads to an impact on meaning, with Harold appearing to be unable to clearly interpret what the student is saying and uses repetition as a CF device, to allow S3 to clarify meaning. This instance perhaps reflects Long’s (1996) argument that CF, which involves negotiation of meaning, can lead to language development, and forms part of Harold’s natural discoursal approach to CF in the classroom. Finally in Extract 3, Harold allows multiple errors to pass uncorrected, as they have not hindered overall communication, reaffirming a meaning-orientated approach to CF.
These short extracts highlight the arguments made in the paper. Firstly, that experimental and quasi-experimental CF studies are not reflective of the real situation in the classroom, even if they do demonstrate language development. Secondly, a discoursal conversational approach to CF is more reflective of the social environment that the students are likely to encounter in the real-world scenarios, and, as highlighted by ELF researchers (Jenkins & Leung, 2017; Rose & Galloway, 2019; Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2015). The skills required by students will be the ability to negotiate meaning, rather than conform to NES norms. Thirdly, it is only by attempting to control variables that researchers are able to engineer CF studies, but the classroom environment is dynamic and unpredictable (Finch, 2010).
At present there are no studies that can attest to the effectiveness of a meaning-orientated CF approach, and therefore the extent to which the CF provided by Harold had any impact on the students is unknown. Likewise, we are unable to know if approaches from other teachers in the study who provided more CF had a more significant effect on students’ language accuracy than Harold’s approach. We are not arguing here that form-focused instruction is not beneficial for learners, only that the strong accuracy-orientated CF within SLA research has helped to perpetuate NES and SE ideologies within ELT, and that this may not be the most appropriate approach for all teaching and learning contexts or for aligning the needs and beliefs of students and teachers. In calling for a repositioning to meaning-orientated CF, and research to further understand the potential effects, it would serve to provide a balance against current CF research foci. Moreover, this is not to say that an accuracy-orientated CF is not suitable in some contexts (Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2015), but that a meaning-orientated approach would provide teachers more options in the classroom, while also offering justification for some teachers who are already naturally meaning-orientated in positioning, though express guilt and regret that they are doing a disservice to students by not correcting many of their errors.
Future Direction
Although ELF research has demonstrated the variability of English, Ortega (2013, 2018) argues that SLA researchers treat language knowledge as housed in Standard English with a target deviation perspective that results in perceiving L2 systems as failed approximation. Kohn (2015) asserts that part of the problem is the role of Standard English in ELT, and that while this continues, SLA and ELF may find compromises difficult. Similar to Ha’s (2022) recent research indicating that professional development programs can initiate modifications in teachers’ CF practices, teacher education programs stemming from an ELF paradigm (Rose & Galloway, 2019; Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2015) have demonstrated that an engagement with ELF can impact on pre-service teachers beliefs about CF practices. However, though pre-service teachers may modify their belief systems to have a more nuanced understanding of CF that leans more towards meaning-orientated CF than accuracy-orientated CF, the constraints imposed on them through standard language ideologies permeating educational institutions and standardised norm-driven testing may dictate their CF practices more. While we concur with Fang (2019) that teachers need to be sensitive to the local culture and context, which would inform the extent to which CF provision is needed while prioritising intelligibility over conformity to NES norms, this is less meaningful without empirical support. Therefore, we argue for the need to reposition research in the field of SLA by seasoned CF researchers to examine meaning-orientated CF as a pedagogical goal in the English language classroom.
This repositioning could be achieved through deploying a modified approach encompassing more than Standard English drivers and attempts to control variables that are difficult to control. Traditional approaches to examining CF have run out of road, and while the huge volume of research on CF have contributed a wealth of knowledge in our understanding of how CF operates, the ability to offer further insights could be limited, and simply involve the replication of studies in different contexts, using different CF tools, different language targets, with an explanation of how these variational features are limitations of the study. A meaning-orientated CF approach for research purposes should transition away from the typical short-term studies attempting to quantify CF efficacy. Instead, a longer-term approach should be implemented to assess the quality of CF provided to cohorts of students at a more individual level and how it can contribute to communicative development through a sociolinguistic lens aligning with the reality of English communication in the current climate. Research conducted in this manner would perhaps necessitate a case study approach and would not achieve the generalisability previous CF research has often attempted, a position that aligns with Abbuhl’s (2021) assertion of the need for more small-scale studies. Nevertheless, the cumulative body of work resulting from this approach would be able to accommodate multiple contexts offering a holistic overview that could underline transferable aspects appropriate for sociolinguistic realities connected with teaching and learning contexts. As this paper makes clear, the current pre-occupation of CF researchers can no longer be justified on methodological, epistemological, and sociolinguistic grounds, and it is only through engagement with linguistic research fields outside of SLA that CF practices in the ELT classroom can be investigated alongside approaches that are both beneficial to learners needs and account for the relationship between English and the learners’ social identity.
About the Authors
Robert Weekly is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education and English at the University of Nottingham Ningbo. He worked as EAP tutor in the UK, Turkey and China, before joining the school of Education and English in 2018. He currently teaches in the areas of Sociolinguistics, World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca, which are reflective of his current research interests. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2929-1951
Andrew Pollard is a lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Society at Charles Darwin University. His professional experience has spanned English, academic literacies and applied linguistics across Australia, China and Korea. Andrew’s major research interests surround global Englishes and the development of language education practice and policy. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2355-2241
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the paper, and also the editor of TESL-EJ, Thomas N. Robb for his patience during the editing process.
To Cite this Article
Weekly, R. & Pollard, A. (2024). Repositioning corrective feedback to a meaning-orientated approach in the English language classroom. Teaching English as a Second Language Electronic Journal (TESL-EJ), 27 (4). https://doi.org/10.55593/ej.27108a10
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Appendix
Transcription Conventions
Repair Words in bold indicate an error.
Repair Words in italics indicate corrective feedback.
(.) Indicates a pause in talk of less than 0.2 seconds.
::: Colons indicate the sound was prolonged.
@@@ Laughter: The length of the @ indicates the length of the laughter
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