Literatura y Lingüística Nº19

ISSN 0716-5811 / pp. 283-292

Corrective Feedback in Second

Language Classrooms
Leonardo Véliz C.*

Abstract:
In this paper I attempt to analyse and survey the role of corrective feedback –more specifically
recasts– in the interaction between teachers and L2 students in a classroom. Thus, I explore
the effects of recasts on students’ self-correction in order to finally come to the conclusion
whether or not students are able to notice this type of underlying correction and, therefore,
reformulate their ill-formed utterances. Besides, I also undertake a comprehensive survey
of the literature on the topic. Two different groups of students from the English Teaching
Trainig Programme at Universidad Católica Raúl Silva Henrríquez are studied. Five students
taking English courses at an intermediate level and five taking advanced English courses.
Intermediate and advanced students have been categorised on the basis of their number of
English language courses they have taken. Intermediate students have taken four, whereas
advanced have taken seven. In this paper the point at issue is whether harmful and ineffective
or essential and rather effective, and whether recasts are noticeable for students to ‘read
between lines’ and figure out the underlying correction. I take the stand that recasts are only
effective when using them with advanced students as they are more cognitively advanced
and, therefore, able to make inferences and interpret the implicit message to reformulate
their mistakes. The results as well as the tests on the whole, clearly demonstrate that recasts
as a corrective technique happen to be a bit more effective with advanced students than
with intermediate students, though the difference is not striking.

Key words: Corrective feedback, recasts, clarification request, positive feedback, negative
feedback

Resumen:
En el presente trabajo procuro analizar el rol de la asesoría remedial o retroalimentación
correctiva, precisamente Recasts (corrección implícita), en la interacción entre profesores
y alumnos de una segunda lengua. De esta manera, analizo los efectos de la corrección im-
plícita en la auto-corrección de los alumnos para finalmente llegar a la siguiente conclusión:
los alumnos avanzados son capaces de percibir este tipo de corrección implícita ya que
sus habilidades cognitivas están más desarrolladas. Dos grupos de la Universidad RSH son
estudiados. Cinco estudiantes pertenecientes a un nivel intermedio y cinco a nivel avanzado
han sido categorizados de acuerdo al número de cursos tomados durante los semestres
en la universidad. Mi planteamiento se relaciona a que la corrección implícita (recasts)
serán sólo efectiva con estudiantes cognitivamente más avanzados ya que son capaces
de hacer inferencias con mayor rapidez, auto-corregirse y así reformular las oraciones mal
formuladas y estructuradas.

Palabras clave: retroalimentación correctiva, corrección implícita, pregunta de clarificación,

retroalimentación positiva, retroalimentación negativa

* Universidad Católica Raúl Silva Henríquez. M. A. © in Linguistics. [email protected]

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Leonardo Véliz Campos

1. Introduction
When we ask ourselves about what technique or method we use
when teaching language, in our case English, the answer is complex and
requires a long explanation. As a matter of fact, if we make an attempt
to answer such a complex question we are forced to look back on our
history of Language Teaching. Social and Linguistic Sciences, particularly
the field of Language Teaching, have been subjected to various changes
from the very beginning.

Teachers all over the world have gone through the same situation;
adapting their methods and techniques to newer and more modern
ways of presenting and teaching the language in their classrooms, and
getting accustomed to newer approaches and newfangled perspectives
which, in most cases, end up being very innovative and revolutionary at
the same time.

From the Classical Method which dates back to the 17th and 18th cen-
tury, and whose main premise was based on the learning of Latin and
Greek, to those more modern ones, such as Strategies-Based Instruction,
Communicative Language Teaching and even the so-called notion of
“Eclectisism” have attracted many teachers and Language researchers’
attention as to what premises, patterns and approaches to follow in order
to make the teaching of language increasingly effective. Besides, all of
the components and factors involved in language teaching have also
suffered the consequences. Thus, the focus on the classrooms’ contents,
students’ participation in the class, the aspect of language to be empha-
sised; whether accuracy or fluency, errors made by students, correction
of errors on the part of the teacher and peers in general have also been
a mater of study and analysis.

In this paper, my main purpose is to provide some crucial information

regarding different types of corrective feedback and mention the notion

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of recasts and analyse its effects on second language learning by referring

to how effective or ineffective they are.

2. Competence vs. Performance

This is one of the distinctions drawn by Chomsky (1965) when he
analysed the Linguistic theory and made clear assumptions with what
Linguistic Theory should be concerned. Competence, on the one hand,
is related to psychological and mental properties of the mind; in other
words, it refers to the abstract part of the language: The knowledge stored
in the mind. (Chomsky:1965, p. 3)

On the other hand, Performance refers to the realization of the abs-

tract part of the language in the actual production of utterances in a
certain place and at a certain time which includes all the grammatical and
non-grammatical features of language as well as the linguistic and non-
linguistic aspects of it, viz. contextual and situational factors, hesitations,
slips of the tongue, body language, and so forth. (Chomsky: 1965)

It is also important to highlight the changes and perspectives the

notion of performance has adopted. For instance, some researchers have
put a great deal of emphasis on pragmatic aspects of the language and
performance alike. Situational and contextual aspects are crucial when
thinking of language in use or performance. Hymes (1972) put it very
clearly when he introduced a somewhat different notion of performan-
ce, adding a few components to Chomsky’s definition. Communicative
competence, in contrast to Chomsky’s definition, has taken the form of
appropriateness of language to particular situations or contexts and its
sociocultural significance, in other words it is the knowledge of how and
when to use language appropriately. This definition seems to be more
narrowed-down as language occurs among people and in context with
all its situational components which affect and interrupt the flow of a
conversation at times. In any Second Language classroom, performance,
producing language orally, and communicative competence- knowing
how, when and where to use an utterance appropriately- are two main
goals to be achieved by language teachers. However, when it comes to
producing language orally and using the language in communicative
contexts teachers are faced with a very difficult problem to tackle, that
of students’ errors and how to treat them.

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3. Corrective Feedback
Error correction has always been a very controversial topic, and per-
haps a thorny issue as there is very little agreement as to how to correct
somebody who has made an error and whether this correction will be
effective or not.

Error correction can easily be described on a continuum ranging from

the idea that it can be harmful and ineffective to being very essential and
beneficial for some grammatical structures.

According to recent studies, as will be shown later on, it has been

proved that error correction is effective, necessary and essential but the
obstacle which prevents error correction from being totally effective lies
in teachers’ inconsistency and unsystematic ways of dealing with errors.
Whether systematic, consistent or effective the teacher’s reaction is to
errors, corrective feedback has been widely defined as:

“…The teacher’s response to a student error”

(Dekeyser: 1993)

3.1 Different types of feedback

While second language acquisition researches (SLA) have agreed
that input is essential and important in second language acquisition,
many others still debate the form that input should take, either positive
or negative.

3.1.1 Positive feedback vs. Negative feedback

Positive feedback, on the one hand, is regarded as important and cru-

cial for adult second language acquisition (krashen: 1977, 1994) whereas,
on the other, some other researches have considered it to be insufficient
for second language learning.

Apart from its importance and sufficiency, positive feedback plays

a role in language learning and it refers to those elements and type of
evidence given to learners which tell them what is possible in the TL, as
opposed to negative feedback which is related to the type of information
given to learners that tell them what is not possible in the TL, being the
former more descriptive; whereas the latter is more prescriptive as it tells
the learner what s/he is not allowed to say because the target language
structure does not allow it.

Negative feedback is divided into two other types: Preemtive and

reactive. The former tries to prevent learners from making mistakes by

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giving clear instructions and explanations together with explicit grammar

rules. The latter takes place after the mistake has been made by the lear-
ner. This reaction to error making can be implicit or explicit on the part
of the language instructor, i.e. the way the language teacher corrects the
mistake can be very explicit by telling the student that the sentence s/he
has produced is wrong because of this and that reason. But it can also
be an implicit way of correcting the mistake by repeating the ill-formed
utterance, by using clarification requests, such as Pardon? Sorry?

Recasts fall into the implicit category of corrective feedback.

4. Are recasts really effective?

As suggested before, negative feedback can also include implicit
indications that an utterance is not well formed. Recasts, for instance,
make a complete reformulation of a learner’s ill-formed utterance and
provide relevant information which is obligatory but is either missing or
wrongly used in the learner’s utterance. E.g. My dad works from Monday
to Friday, as a recast of “My dad work from Monday to Friday”).

Even though recasts are the most frequent type of corrective feedback
used by language instructors, it has been proved that they are not com-
pletely effective in the classroom, that is, recasts have resulted in uptake
much less frequently than any other type of feedback.

By uptake we understand the learner’s response to the teacher correc-

tion and, at the same time, the attempt made by the learner to reformulate
h/his ill-formed utterance and produce the correct one.

5. The study
The data collected has been obtained from a series of four audio-ta-
ped lessons with both intermediate and advanced students. The lessons
audio-taped were focused on oral activities for students to practise for
an oral test they would have. The main structural contents to be covered
with the intermediate class were as follows:
(i) Past simple vs. Past continuous
(ii) Past simple and past perfect
(iii) Prepositions (in – on – at)

On the other hand, the advanced class was focused on the following
contents:

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(i) Conditionals (If-clauses)

(ii) Modal auxiliary verbs and semi-auxiliary verbs (can – could –will
–be supposed to-be about to – be meant to).
(iii) Phrasal verbs (some with –up and -down)

All of the oral conversations occurred during normal and ordinary

grammar lessons at university.

5.1 Some extracts from conversations

Intermediate class:

One of the questions the teacher asks one of the students to elicit
information on past simple and continuous is:

Teacher: Tell me Pamela about some of the things you did at the
weekend (the class was on a Monday).

Pamela: Well, mmm… the Saturday I get up a bit more later than
usual because is the only day I can to rest more.

Teacher: D’you know what I did on Saturday? On Saturday my wife

and I went to the supermarket early in the morning and got back home
at about eleven. So, when did you get up a bit later? On Saturday or
Sunday?.

Pamela: On the Saturday, I…..get… a bit more later.

In this short dialogue, we can see that the student, Pamela, has made
a lot of mistakes concerning the use of prepositions and comparative
forms. When the teacher interacts with the student reformulating the
wrongly-used article in the Saturday instead of the preposition, the stu-
dent is able to -unconsciously I believe- grasp part of the correction in
the form of recasts but continues using the definite article and saying
on the Saturday.

Intermediate class: (another part of the conversation, now using

clarification requests as correction)

Teacher: So, Roberto. Your girlfriend was not in when you phoned
her yesterday morning?

Student: Mmm.. No, She wasn’t in the house. She has already come
to the university when I phone her.

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Teacher: Sorry? What did you say? Could you say it again please,
Roberto?

Student: …That she was not in the house when I phoned. She already
had come to the university.

Teacher: Oh, right. She had already come to university when you
phoned her (very slowly).

Student: Yeap. She…

In this part of the conversation, we clearly see that the clarification

request used by the teacher as a type of corrective feedback reformula-
ted part of the ill-formed structure used by the student in the sense that
the student was able to comprehend, on the one hand, that there was
an underlying message when saying: Sorry? Say that again please? He
realised he was making a mistake. On the other hand, the student did his
best to correct his own mistake but does it in such a way that syntactically
in not perfect, that is, he changes the position and order of some of the
units; but despite the wrong position of some of the units, he is able to
understand and reformulate the tense and aspect he was using. He had
previously used a present perfect structure, but then he changed to past
perfect, which was the tense and aspect the teacher was expecting.

Advanced class:

In this class, the teacher and the students are expected to go through
some more advanced topical and grammatical contents, such as If-clauses
and phrasal verbs.

(In the middle of a conversation between the teacher and Roxana, who
are using If-clauses in context).

Context: The teacher asks her what she would do if knew that she has
a test as soon as she walks in to the classroom.

Roxana: … I think I would talk to the teacher to ask her for the per-
mission to give the test other day.

Teacher: what exactly would say to the teacher? (trying to elicit more
information and sentences in the conditional form)

Student: …Mmmm (a lot of hesitation) … don’t know. I would… I will

talk and say “Teacher I can’t give the test ‘cause I don’t feel prepared”…

(and the student goes on and on)

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In this small piece of conversation, we can see a shift in the usage of

the conditional on the part of the student. This shift, from would to will,
is mainly because of the pressure the student is feeling at that moment
as she knows how to use the conditional form right after a question, but
when it comes to giving reasons, arguments and expand a bit the more
the answer she is giving, she faces difficulties. This is a good strategy we
as teachers should use in order to really confirm the understanding of
a patter, rule, lexical item and so forth. Students normally learn a lexical
item, a grammatical structure in one context only, but when the teacher
reformulates or changes the context just a little bit, the student feels a
bit puzzled and shocked as s/he thinks it is a totally different thing. In
other words, we should decontextualise language at some stages and
play with it, create new things, make up new phrases, invent new collo-
cations and come up with new metaphors in such a way the students
feel that language is not something that has to be understood in one
context and not in the other.

Advanced class: (another part of a different conversation)

In the middle of a conversation…

Teacher: …everybody has different kinds of responsibilities. People

at work are supposed to be on time, we are supposed to show respect
to everybody… what else are we supposed to do Javier?

Javier: …Mmm…well, we like students are supposed that we study

for a test..

Teacher’s interruption: … I guess you are not supposed to study

only for a test, you are supposed to study for life, aren’t you?

Javier: yeap, sorry I know… so..we are supposed to study for life,
and also we are supposed that we are friendly with teachers and our
classmates.

Teacher: ..and we AS (VERY EXPLICIT) teachers are supposed to be

friendly with students as well.

Javier: yeap, all of us as students are supposed to be kind and nice

with everybody.

Teacher: Very good, Javier, Excellent. You are right. You AS STUDENTS
ARE SUPPOSED TO BE KIND AND NICE TO EVERYBODY.

In this piece of conversation we clearly see that the student is not

able to grasp the structure of the semi-auxiliary verb despite the various

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examples given by the teacher before giving the students the opportunity
to talk. However, when the student has the chance to talk, he keeps using
a that-clause instead of the verb in infinitive. But at some point in the
conversation he manages to use the form correctly but soon afterwards
he goes back to the old ill-formed structure. But, at the end of the con-
versation Javier managed to understand and grasp the correct form jus
out of the interaction between the teacher and himself.

In order to try to account fro the above-mentioned kind of mistake,

we can say that this is due to the interference of L1, as we certainly use a
that-clause in Spanish when using a semi-auxiliary verb like be supposed
to. As for the difference between as and like, it is something we need to
tackle in the classroom with a large number of exercises of different kinds
in order for them to comprehend and internalise the different contextual
uses of as and like.

6. Results
Regarding the results and analyses of all the conversations audio-
taped (4 different conversations to be precise), one of the conclusions I
have arrived at is that despite recasts are the most widely-used type of
corrective feedback in the classroom, they tend to be rather ineffective
as, most of the time, students do not even realise s/he is being corrected
implicitly, they simply believe the teacher is jus interacting with them.
Nevertheless, I have found that students who are a bit more cognitively
advanced – and consequently more capable of sorting out underlying
meanings and messages- are able to perceive the correction in the form
of recasts as they know more about English and most of them want to
sound native-like and grammatically close to a native speaker so they
are more aware of the mistakes they make and, therefore, their corres-
ponding correction.

The following chart shows us the type of correction which was used
by the teacher and how students responded to such corrections. The
percentages used in the chart show the number of uptakes on the part
of the students. In other words, they show the number of times students
reformulated their ill-formed utterance correctly.

Feedback type Recast Explicit correction clarification request

Intermediate 25% 52% 23%
Advanced 38,5% 5% 56,5%
uptake% uptake % uptake %

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Conclusions
As Language Teaching Methods have changed and progressed over
time, the role of corrective feedback has also made remarkable progress
in the last two decades, particularly in the 90’s.

Concerning the inconsistency and effectiveness of recasts and correc-

tive feedback in general, it has come to be known that problems regarding
the inconsistency and ambiguity are due to the lack and unsystematic
approaches adopted by the majority of teachers as far as correction is
concerned. Thus, in order for corrective feedback to be very effective
teachers need to more consistent and systematic when correcting faulty
utterances because it has been found that teachers sometimes accept
ill-formed utterances and some other times they do not.

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Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence. In J. B. Pride &

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Kelly, J. & Stoops, L. (2000). Second and Foreign Language Learning

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Krashen, S.D. (1994). Bilingual education and second language

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