Mina Drever, Training and Development Agency for Schools, UK

Interactional corrective feedback in first language (L1) and second/foreign

language (L2) acquisition and learning: does it have the same effect?
This paper reports on theoretical investigations into language learning and
teaching that spanned more than half a century, and empirical findings published
in my doctoral thesis in 2001. The empirical enquiry focused on the teaching of
English in multilingual classrooms in England, at a time of an apparent
acquisitional approach to language teaching before the National Literacy
Strategy was introduced into the schools curriculum in 1998.
This paper suggests that corrective feedback permeates all aspects of language
teaching and learning that will be considered by the Language Education
Framework working group. Whether language is taught as a discrete subject (LS),
or as language across the curriculum (LAC), or as language of school education
(LE), there are implications for policy makers, curriculum planners, teachers and
learners. SLIDE 2. In each of these three contexts are implicated levels of
competence, which is at the core of questions related to social inclusion,
knowledge about language, dialect versus standard language and cognition.
Linguistic competence in these three language teaching contexts is implicated
in all the domains of language use personal communication, social and formal
interactions, educational and professional performance, in which are in turn
implicated knowledge about language, teaching approaches, assessment, standard
versus non-standard language and pronunciation. AND central to all these
questions is assessment for learning, in which interactional corrective feedback
plays SLIDE 3 - a significant role, especially in the context of language of
school education and in language across the curriculum. In such contexts the
questions of competence and learnability become crucial. For example, How much
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language is necessary and by what stage in order to tackle complex concepts such
as longitude and latitude in a geography context? Should learners be allowed to
believe that their performance is, on the whole, error-free? What happens to the
learners when the linguistic demands of the curriculum become very
sophisticated? How does a fluent EL2 speaker work out, without intervention, the
subtle but important semantic difference between to be frightened of and to be
frightened for in the analysis of the emotions of an army towards its general in a
history context? During one of my teaching sessions with a group of 14-year-olds
(one Chinese who was a fluent speaker of English and three EL1 students), none
of the students had understood the tasks instruction, requiring them to discuss
why an army was frightened for its general. All four students wrote about why the
soldiers were frightened of their general. Neither could they distinguish between
these two questions: (a) what do you think of the weather today? requiring
expressing an opinion; and (b) whats the weather like today? requiring a
statement of fact. The answer to both questions by all four students was: its
raining, which is the appropriate answer to (b) but not to (a). This example leads
us to ask WHY WE SHOULD CORRECT ERRORS - SLIDE 4
1.

self-repair

Controversy surrounds the issue of corrective feedback, in the L1 and L2

literature, and much of it stems from the notion that errors are indications that
language learning is taking place (Corder, 1967, 1981; Dulay and Burt, 1974;
Tomasello and Heron, 1989) and they should not be corrected. Furthermore it is
often posited that learners will spontaneously self-repair (Karmiloff-Smith, 1985;
Krashen, 1985, 1987), and error correction can be harmful to L2 development
(Holley and King, 1971) as well as counterproductive in the young childs L1
acquisition (Braine, 1971; McNeil, 1966).
Ideally, said Long, once the feedback has been given, students should make
the correcting move (Long, 1977, p. 279) before teachers provide the correction.
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And this premise implies that learners must understand the feedback, and possess
the appropriate linguistic knowledge to self-repair (Karmiloff-Smith, 1985; Carroll
and Swain, 1993). Self-repair also depends on the types of errors that have been
produced (Corder, 1967), on implicit (Karmiloff-Smith, 1985) and explicit
linguistic knowledge (Krashen, 1985, 1987) of learners and on shared
metalanguage between learners and teachers (Carroll and Swain, 1993).
2.

transitional competence
Corder (1967) distinguished between two types of errors made by both L1

adults and L2 speakers. He classified as performance mistakes unsystematic

slips of the tongue, while errors, are systematic (Corder, 1967, p. 166) in the
sense that they result from inadequate knowledge of the system of language. They
represent the transitional competence (Corder, 1967 p 166 italics in original)
which is being acquired by learners both in L1 and L2 on the basis of
hypothesis testing. When errors occur during this process, they are evidence that
rules are being induced and language learning is taking place (Allwright and
Bailey, 1991; Corder, 1967; Tomasello and Heron, 1988).
3. metalinguistic awareness
The development of metalinguistic awareness, though under the guise of
different terms, is the common ground between the L1 and L2 studies reviewed
and they suggested that it may not be attainable without explicit instruction and
corrective feedback. Explaining why a sentence construction is not correct,
knowing why a verb is better suited to a particular intention, making
grammaticality judgements involves metalinguistic reflection (Pratt et al., 1984)
for which it is necessary to be metalinguistically aware, to be able to reflect upon
and manipulate the structural features of spoken language (Pratt et al., 1984, p.
129). Metalinguistic awareness is considered important to the development of
cognitive skills (Ely, 1997; Pratt and Grieve, 1984a, 1984b), to reading (Demont
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and Gombert, 1996; Donaldson, 1978; Downing, 1977; Titone, 1993) and to all
learning (Lee, 1997; Pratt et al., 1984). Pratt and Grieve (1984a) argued that as
children develop an awareness of the nature of cognitive functions, they gain
more control of thinking (Pratt and Grieve, 1984a, p. 9).
4.

fossilisation

Fossilisation is an interlanguage (Long, 2003, White 2003) phenomenon and can

occur when learners receive no information as to the correctness or incorrectness
of their production and applies to both inappropriate and appropriate constructions
(Vigil and Oller, 1976). L2 children of primary school age have been observed to
display fossilisation errors (Selinker et al., 1975) previously associated only with
adult L2 learners (Selinker, 1972, Han and Odlin, 2006).
WHAT ERRORS SHOULD BE CORRECTED,

SLIDE 5, WHEN and

HOW?
It is clear that corrective feedback should focus on Corders systematic errors
which may fossilise thus affecting adversely the development of a correct
interlanguage.
The timing of error correction
The timing of corrective feedback depends on whether it is a mistake or an error in
Corders (1967) sense. In the case of competence errors, the decision will be
dictated by a number of factors: is it a new error or one thats been encountered
before? Should it be dealt with immediately or should it be postponed (Allwright
and Bailey, 1991; Long, 1977)? There are advantages and disadvantages to any
timing. Immediate treatment interrupts learners flow and may not be positively
effective (Vigil and Oller, 1976). Postponing it to a future lesson will be less
effective, as time elapses between the error and the treatment (Chaudron, 1977,
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1988; Long, 1977). Yet this may be necessary, particularly if the error is common
to the whole class (Holley and King, 1971).

HOW should errors be corrected?

According to the literature corrective feedback should be varied (Allwright and
Bailey, 1991). It should facilitate monitor use, i.e. the ability to self-correct
resulting from learned knowledge of grammatical forms (Krashen, 1985, 1987). It
should be appropriately pitched with effective support (Tomasello and Heron,
1989; Vigil and Oller, 1976). It should emphasise content and communication of
meaning (Holley and King, 1971). These maxims from the L2 literature suggest
four dimensions SLIDE 6 - to corrective feedback:
1. Types and features of corrective feedback include recasts (repetitions and
expansions), clarification requests, confirmation checks (Chaudron, 1977,
1988).
2. Cognitive orientation: focuses on linguistic devices that allow learners to
develop their explicit grammatical knowledge necessary to self-monitoring
(Krashen, 1987; Vigil and Oller; 1976).
3. Psychological: corrective feedback can be negative, positive and neutral (Vigil
and Oller, 1976). Each must address the affective (i.e. appeal to emotional
attitudes) as well as the cognitive nature of learning, but there must be balance
between them (Edwards, 1995c; Vigil and Oller, 1976). The most effective in
encouraging appropriate grammatical modifications in learners is the positiveaffective and negative-cognitive combination (Vigil and Oller, 1976), i.e. when
corrective feedback is accompanied by positive and encouraging tones of
voice, gestures and facial expressions.
4. One super-dimension that encompasses all these aspects is the implicitexplicit
dichotomy. Explicit feedback is any feedback that overtly states that a learners
output is not correct, with clear information about the state of the learners
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utterance. Implicit feedback consists of devices such as confirmation checks

and requests for clarification, from which learners should infer that the form of
their utterance is responsible for the teachers comprehension problems
(Carroll and Swain, 1993 p. 361).
The advantage of explicit feedback can be outweighed by the demands on
learners language processing abilities, like interpretation of the feedback. This in
turns requires knowledge of specialised vocabulary and specialised genre
[which may be] beyond the comprehension of the untrained (Carroll and
Swain, 1993 p. 362). On the other hand, implicit feedback may not be very useful
in so far as it may fail to indicate the source of the error [and it requires].
much inferencing on the part of the learners (Carroll and Swain, 1993 p. 362).

EVIDENCE IN THE LITERATURE - Feedback to children and adults in LA

and SLA literature
My literature investigation focused on primary classrooms with first and second
speakers of English. My search for guidelines on corrective feedback revealed no
study, up to 2001, on corrective feedback, in L1 primary classrooms. [Indeed up
to 2004, there was no evidence that anyone was looking at corrective feedback in
the primary language classroom, according to Black, speaking at a primary
languages conference in Cambridge.] I thus searched the language acquisition
literature of very young children for any evidence for and/or against corrective
feedback in L1 learning.
Language acquisition and corrective feedback in young children
There is controversy in the L1 literature on whether adults provide corrective
feedback to young children, and if they do, whether children a) notice it and b) are
capable of learning from it (Bohannon III and Stanowicz, 1988, 1989, 1997;

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Bohannon III et al., 1990; Brown and Bellugi, 1964; Brown and Hanlon, 1970;
Gordon, 1990; McNeil, 1966; Marcus, 1993). Some researchers saw expansions as
maternal imitations of the content of childrens utterances, albeit with added
grammatical forms, but they were not sure that this was feedback with any role in
language learning. Research in the last 10 years suggests that very young children
are capable of learning from some form or other of corrective feedback (Saxton,
1998, Saxton et al, 2005, Saxton et al., 2006).
Recasts have been extensively investigated in the observational L1 literature
but there is no agreement on their exact role in language acquisition (Bohannon III
and Stanowicz, 1988). Recasts are simple or complex (Baker and Nelson,
1984) reformulations of childrens utterances, which may or may not contain
errors. When they reformulate correct utterances recasts are modelling
structures that may or may not be already part of a childs current linguistic
knowledge (Farrar, 1992; Nelson, 1977; Nelson et al., 1973).
Feedback to children in L2
Studies in second language classrooms suggest that implicit corrective feedback in
communicative language teaching classrooms can have a direct effect on learners
output accuracy (Lightbown and Spada, 1990). Characterised by meaning
negotiation and meaning exchange leading to mutual understanding (Speidel,
1987, p. 104) they provide a great deal of rough tuning (Speidel, 1987, p. 110)
in the form of model/feedback, i.e. when teachers extend, expand, reformulate
recast learners responses, they simultaneously provide corrections and modelling
to learners linguistic errors.
However, Chaudron (1977) analysed teachers feedback in six of this type of
classroom talk (learners aged 1315) and discovered that SLIDE 7 - the most
effective corrective feedback first located errors and immediately rejected them, in
the form of repetition of the error with emphatic tone. Then metalinguistic
explanation for errors was provided to encourage learners to self-correct. In the
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absence of self-correction, the original question was rephrased, and, if necessary,

other learners were asked to help. Teachers least successful SLIDE 8 - responses
to learners errors were exact repetitions of grammatical errors and expansions
because they did not lead to correct responses by students.
Expansions are a form of recasts that did not lead to learner uptake in two
studies by Lyster and Ranta (1997) and Lyster (1998) with 9-11 year olds. Lyster
found recasts ambiguous and ineffective in communicative classrooms (Lyster,
1998, p. 74) where the line between content and form is rather blurred. The most
successful type of feedback, according to Lyster and Ranta (1997), was
metalinguistic.
Lyster and Ranta (1997) also found that teachers feedback was highly
idiosyncratic and ambiguous. Closer analysis by Lyster (1998) of Lyster and
Rantas (1997) data revealed that the intonation of teachers recasts rendered them
ambiguous. Ambiguity increased when recasts were accompanied by signs of
approval. And in 103 instances teachers responded affirmatively to the
substantive content of students ill-formed utterances. (Lyster, 1998 p. 70).
Feedback to L2 adults
Similar results on feedback were found in L2 studies with adults. Tomasello and
Herons (1988, 1989) garden-path technique offered an interesting combination
of implicit instruction and explicit metalinguistic feedback, effective in arresting
L1 transfer errors (1989) and L2 generalisation errors (1988).
Carroll et al. (1992) conducted an experiment with implicit feedback to
French L1 university students learning EL2 of intermediate and advanced
proficiency. They concluded that implicit feedback plus positive input affected
long-term lexical learning but had no effect on morphological generalisation.
And Carroll and Swains (1993) experiments tested the effects of implicit and
explicit feedback on EL2 learning by Spanish L1 speakers with intermediate
proficiency in EL2. They showed that explicit negative feedback with
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metalinguistic explanation led to correct application of dative alternation rules (for

example, John sent a letter to Mary can alternate with John sent Mary a letter p.
363) and understanding that there are verbs that cannot alternate.
MAIN FINDINGS EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION SLIDE 9
On the basis of these theoretical indications, I carried out an investigation on
corrective feedback in 65 English primary schools classrooms in 33 education
authorities. In each school one teacher completed a questionnaire and a second
teacher in a separate school was interviewed. The questionnaire and interview
were cross-validated to get a picture of how class-teachers in thirty-three
authorities taught English and corrected errors in multilingual classrooms in the
mid 1990s. A sample of eight teachers was selected from the questionnaire
respondents for the observation study which told me if teachers did in reality what
they said they did in the questionnaire.
Summary of empirical results instructional approach how teacher said
they taught
The results from the questionnaire and interview indicated that all 65 teachers in
thirty-three authorities intervened in the acquisition of their EL1 and EL2
childrens language competence. Sixty-nine per cent of them did so with a
communicative approach, providing rough tuning (Speidel, 1987 p. 110) when
necessary, in a sort of guided acquisition, as one interview teacher put it.
Summary of empirical results error correction how teachers said they
corrected
Covert feedback emerged as the overall feedback type from the questionnaire and
interview analysis SLIDE 10- Although the results revealed differences between
interview and questionnaire teachers, which were attributed to method design,
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covert feedback was mentioned many more times, suggesting that covert feedback
was likely to be selected by more teachers than overt or mixed feedback. The latter
contained covert and overt feedback, making it a recipe for confusion and
ambiguity, as already found in the literature.
Covert correction to speaking was mentioned by an almost equal number of
questionnaire (19) and interview (16) teachers SLIDE 11 - . The predominant
mention of covert over overt feedback to speaking by both sets of teachers was
confirmed by the highly significant results of two Wilcoxon two-tailed signed
ranks tests. Among the questionnaire teachers, covert feedback to speaking was
mentioned by six times more teachers than those who gave overt feedback. And
more than three times the number of interview teachers said to give covert
feedback to speaking over those who did so overtly.
Summary of empirical results how teachers actually gave feedback
Eight video-recorded observation lessons were analysed to see if teachers taught
and corrected in reality as they claimed in the questionnaire. In-depth analysis of
teacher responses to errors provides further insights into teacher feedback. The
first thing SLIDE 12 to be said about the feedback given by the eight
observation teachers is that, overall, they corrected covertly with 76% of all
corrective feedback being covert. Secondly these 8 teachers corrected 71% of
childrens linguistic errors covertly SLIDE 13 while 18.4% went ignored,
because correction would break the flow of the interaction.
Interesting results from a finer analysis of teachers observed feedback
included the following: Corrective feedback was often confusing SLIDE 14 -.
Sometimes utterances in teachers corrective response wavered between overt and
covert negative, and I categorised it as covert/overt/negative feedback. At other
times it wavered between covert negative, implying rejection of pupils
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10

productions, and covert positive, as if teachers could not make up their mind about
the appropriateness of pupils contributions. I categorised this feedback as
covert/positive/negative. Lyster (1998) also found ambiguity in the way teachers
used recasts, often accompanied by signs of approval when they responded
simultaneously to content and language errors. This is a problem specific to
communicative classrooms, suggested Lyster: - SLIDE 15 This reveals what must be a source of ambiguity for young L2
learners as well as a dilemma for teachers whose mandate is to
teach both language and content: namely, how to reinforce the
substantive content of student messages while giving them clear
messages about language form (Lyster, 1998 p. 71).
An example of a covert/negative/positive/feedback is this teachers sequence
of responses SLIDE 16 - . A group of pupils and teacher were discussing the
meaning of words with ch (pronounced as k) in them. At this point in the lesson it
was the word Christmas. The teacher had asked for a sentence with this word in it.
First she covertly approved (cvp) of it by repeating (rcr) a pupils correct response,
line 2. She overtly accepted it (ovp) in the next three utterances. Then she changed
her mind and she wanted more information (line 6) and asked a referential (rfl)
question. At this point the feedback reverted to covert, but I was no longer sure
whether it was covert/negative or covert/positive and categorised it as
covert/negative/positive (cnp). When she said that doesnt explain a lot (line 8)
she implied that the explanation given in line 1, which had already been accepted
as correct in lines 3, 4, 5, was now only partially correct. This confusion is
compounded by the use of tones 1 which denotes certainty in line 4 (very good)
and line 8 (that doesnt explain a lot); also tone 3 is neutral and could denote
certainty or uncertainty (lines 2 and 7, exact repetition of childs utterance).
Intonation contributed highly to all eight teachers idiosyncratic feedback. For
example one teacher gave exact repetitions in tone 5, which can express positive
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11

and joyful surprise, as well as negative surprise expressing doubts. Another

teacher prompted mostly in tone 3, a very neutral tone with no indication to pupils
as to why the teacher was prompting, whether pupils had made an error or not.
Do learners want corrective feedback?
The working group considering these findings may also wish to consider what
learners want. As part of my research I asked six bilingual children, over a period
of 10 weeks of teaching programme how they felt about being corrected. They
were almost unanimous in saying that they did not mind how they were corrected
SLIDE 17 - so long as teachers stuck to their method of doing so. Over a period
of 10 lessons I asked the children on three occasions if they wanted to be
corrected, how and why? Except for one occasion, when one child said that shed
did not like written errors being corrected, there was a 94% consistency to wanting
to be corrected, in any way the teachers chose, so that they could learn.
IN CONCLUSION SLIDE 18
Second language acquisition literature findings on corrective feedback indicate
that:
metalinguistic corrective feedback is the most effective in promoting uptake
and self-correction in communicative lessons
recasts are the most used features of implicit corrective feedback BUT
recasts do not lead to learner uptake and self-correction
corrective feedback can be idiosyncratic AND confusing
My empirical investigation confirmed these literature findings: the great majority
of participant teachers gave implicit corrective feedback to linguistic errors in their
multilingual classrooms. Much of their feedback was confusing and idiosyncratic.
This, according to the literature, does not lead to learners modifying their internal
grammar. And if erroneous productions are left uncorrected in the process of
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12

grammatical internalisation, fossilisation will become engrained and learners will

never know when they are making wrong inferences. Combining content and
language teaching in language across the curriculum and in language for school
education, as the European Language Framework aims to do, must give serious
considerations to these issues. Otherwise many students in European classrooms
will run the risk of failing examination and tests as a result of linguistic
misconceptions, because maybe they do not understand the linguistic structure of a
question, as my 14 year old students did in their history tasks. Indeed this is going
to be the biggest challenge for curriculum planners and language teachers.
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Mina Drever, consultant, Training and Development Agencies for schools, London
minadrever@aol.com

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