| In order to advance understanding of oral error feedback, this dissertation documents a one semester field study observing three Korean EFL university classes and the Error Feedback Episodes (EFEs) occurring during them. Thirty students and 3 teachers participated in the study. Their classes were observed and video-recorded throughout a four-month semester and 203 EFEs were identified and transcribed. In addition, to obtain data on the impact of the EFEs from the students' perspective, participants completed a brief guided journal at the end of each class and a sample of students participated in interviews during the semester. The study set out to address three questions: (a) what are the characteristics of oral EFEs in advanced proficiency EFL classrooms; (b) does the context of the error feedback lead to any observable, systematic EFE characteristic differences; and (c) what EFE impacts are observed. The database for answering these questions included 203 EFE transcripts from 12 sessions of each of the three classes, 890 guided journals, 24 interview transcripts, and 89 sets of class observation notes. The investigation found that EFE characteristics correspond to the assumptions of the error feedback literature only about half of the time. The length of the EFE was five or more turns 58% of the time, though only longer than 30 seconds 43% of the time. EFE participants included peers 46% of the time. In addition, the distribution of error feedback to students was uneven: in each class, one or two students received more error feedback than their peers did and ten participants from the three classes received error feedback only one or less times during the semester. These findings do not conform to the corrective discourse model on which error feedback coding is often based. Moreover, the contest of the EFEs, such as error type, instructional orientation, and student error feedback preferences, appear to affect EFE characteristics. EFE impact findings suggest that researchers need to consider both positive and negative effects of error feedback and widen their gaze to the social and educational context beyond the individual targeted for the error feedback when evaluating EFE effectiveness. |
