The Impact Of Corrective Feedback On Oral English Output In Utterances Of Vocational College Students

How can we help others to learn the second language? Researchers proposed different ideas of their own to answer this question.Corrective Feedback(CF)is a new recognition to errors during language learning,which is a combination of Interactionism and Cognitive Linguistics.Not only can CF provide second language learners opportunities to notice the gap existing between their current competence and the target language but to repair their hypotheses about the target language.Second Language Learning is always under the impact and effect of two languages as well as their cultures,during which errors are inevitable as a result of negative transfer by learners' mother tongue.Errors,in fact,can provide useful information of learners for the teachers,and also provide researchers with proof of how language is acquired.Many researches have revealed that CF is helpful to improving learners' target language.It is easy to find out in practical teaching that there are some characteristics of vocational college students who are learning English.They are capable of expressing themselves in single words;however,they lack enough output of correct utterances.Therefore,it is hard for them to form a discourse or a turn-taking,which lowers their practical English competence.This paper aims at making an empirical study on theeffects of CF on utterances output made by vocational college students,and tries to answer the following three questions: 1)How does CF affect the quantity of the college students' output in their utterances of oral English? 2)How does CF affect the quality of the college students' output in their utterances of oral English?3)What influence will CF have on students' confidence in English learning?22 students take part in the empirical research.There are 3 groups called Team 2014(6 students),Team 2015A(8 students)and Team2015B(8 students).A book named Selected Sample Questions of National Oral English Competition for College Students is used as the testing material.Those three groups are requested to speak on one of the four topics selected,but only two experimental groups(Team 2014 and Team2015A)receive CF from teachers while there is no CF for the control group(Team 2015B).Recasts and clarification requests are both utilized to correct the errors.In no more than 24 hours another speech on the same topic is held for all 3 groups,and data are collected and compared.After analyzing the statistics collected from the research,we find that CF can promote the output in students' utterances of oral English in the following three aspects:Firstly,CF can help students to produce more utterances in spoken English,and can also lengthen the time of their utterance output.The number of utterances produced by students who receive CF is larger onaverage in each round than those who don't receive.The same occasion appears in the time-accounting of oral English output between the two teams.Secondly,CF can help to control the amount of errors while the output utterances are increasing.Thus the aim to enhance the quality of students' utterance output can be achieved.The repeating rate of errors in utterances produced by students who receive CF is less on average in each round than those who don't receive.The longer it takes to carry through the research,the less errors made by students who receive CF.Last but not the least,the interviews shows that utilization of CF in a proper and reasonable way can help to establish a strong confidence in students' output in oral English and also enhance students' initiative of learning English.Enthusiasm of students who receive CF is much higher in oral English output on average in each round than those who don't receive.As the research going,negative feelings to oral English output arise in the latter team.There are three inspiring points to real English teaching:Firstly,a teacher should take CF into classroom properly to improve the quantity of students' utterances in target language.Secondly,the use of CF as an efficient teaching method can greatly enhance the average oral English level of students.Thirdly,a combination of different methods of CF will provide abetter chance for students to internalize new knowledge.We hope that this experiment can help English teachers in vocational colleges to practice CF in their teaching,and meanwhile will provide a new idea for pedagogical studies in vocational colleges.