Implicit And Explicit Corrective Feedback And Past Tense Acquisition

Second language learning is a process in which learners constantly struggle against errors. And error correction is an important part in second language teaching. As Brown (2001) argues, learners inevitably have errors in second language acquisition, and in fact, if there are no errors in second language learners, there will be no opportunities for them benefiting from the error feedback. The research into corrective feedback has recently gained prominence in the studies of SLA. There seems to be a general consensus among researchers that corrective feedback has a role to play in second language learning. Teachers have a wide variety of corrective feedback at their disposal to focus on learners' errors and the commonly used types are: recast, translation, clarification request, metalinguistic feedback, elicitation, explicit correction, and repetition. Carroll and Swain (1993) found in their research that the effectiveness of negative feedback depends to a large extent on the type of negative feedback provided.Based on Ellis, Loewen, and Erlam's (2006) research into corrective feedback, the present thesis tries to investigate the relative effectiveness of implicit and explicit corrective feedback in terms of learning a new grammatical structure—past tense in the middle school. Three questions in the following were designed for the study:(1) Is corrective feedback effective for learners in terms of learning a new grammatical structure?(2) If there is effectiveness of corrective feedback, do learners learn more from one type of corrective feedback than from another type?(3) Of the two types of corrective feedback, which one do learners prefer, implicit one or explicit one? Why?The quantitative research method was employed in this study to check the effectiveness of implicit and explicit corrective feedback. The major findings of the study can be summarized as follows:(1) Corrective feedback is effective for learners in terms of learning a new grammatical structure.(2) Explicit corrective feedback has greater effect on learning a new grammatical structure, that is to say, learners learn more from explicit feedback than from implicit feedback.(3) Explicit corrective feedback receives more popularity than implicit feedback, and the main reason given by the learners is that explicit feedback increases their awareness of the rules and items of past tense.This thesis is composed of five parts. Chapter 1 makes a briefdescriptive presentation of the whole study. Chapter 2 presents the definition and the relationship of implicit and explicit learning and knowledge, the definition and patterns of corrective feedback, and previous studies of implicit and explicit corrective feedback in the world. Chapter 3 is about methodology. Chapter 4 covers the results collected from the experimental study which are analyzed and discussed. Chapter 5 is the conclusion of the whole thesis, including the summary of the findings, pedagogical implications, the limitations, and recommendations of the study.It is expected to provide some implications for second language learning and teaching in terms of learning a new grammatical structure and to try to diminish some problems of second language acquisition among Chinese learners to a great extent.