The Relative Effectiveness of Corrective Feedback in Classroom Interaction

Abstract

This chapter first reviews observational research conducted in second and foreign language classrooms that has identified various types of oral corrective feedback that teachers provide in response to learner errors. The chapter then reviews the relative effectiveness of the different types of corrective feedback as attested by quasi-experimental classroom research. Next, a range of variables that moderate the effectiveness of oral corrective feedback is identified to illuminate the challenges that teachers face in providing corrective feedback despite the positive outcomes of empirical studies. Specifically addressed are (a) the confounding messages conveyed by co-occurrences of positive and negative feedback, (b) the extent to which teachers focus on language in communicative discourse either incidentally or intentionally, and (c) the tensions arising from learners’ attested preferences to receive feedback relative to their teachers’ hesitations to provide it. A discourse perspective is adopted throughout to illustrate the complexity of oral corrective feedback used by teachers in ways that sustain classroom interaction and maintain its coherence, but without consistently fulfilling a corrective function.