| Since 1980s, with the beginning of the research on discourse and classroom conversation, teacher feedback has become one of the heated topics in discussion. Negative feedback (or corrective feedback) as the opposite of positive feedback was first defined by Gold (1967). Quite a few researchers (Gass 1988; Gass & Varonis 1994; Lyster 1995; Oliver 1995, 2000; Pica 1994; Spada & Lightbown 1993.) contend that negative feedback plays a facilitative role in error correcting and language learning. Most of the previous studies focus on the effectiveness or uptake. However, the studies oneffectiveness seem not so reliable because the process of language learning is so complicated^ and many variables are involved in it. Although the classifications of the negative feedback moves have also been made, it seems that some of them are controversial and ambiguous. It seems that no one studied the relations between errors and teacher's negative feedback strategies except Lyster (1995) and Spada & Lightbown (1993). Up to now, the author has not found any comparative study on errors and teacher's negative feedback strategies between Chinese and Non-Chinese classroom settings. While exposing the relations between errors and teacher's negative feedback strategies may help promote the mutual understandings and perceivings of the teacher and students, and hence activate the classroom atmosphere and improve classroom teaching efficiency, and the comparative study can be of great pedagogical value to the Chinese EFL teaching. Owing to these, it seems to the author quite significant to make the present study.The present study is a descriptive one focuses on the comparison of errors, teacher's negative feedback strategies and the teacher's negative feedback strategies in relation toerrors in Chinese and non-Chinese EFL classroom settings. The database includes twosamples : JMSCT (30 periods)and FSCT (10 periods) which are provided by the School ofForeign Studies, South China Normal University. The procedure of the study is as follows: doing the pilot study → coding the error types and teacher's negative feedback strategics→ tagging the error types, teacher's negative feedback strategies and the teacher'snegative feedback strategies in relation to errors → forming the concordance of the tagged research data - retrieving the data -*?collecting the statistical findings → doing the comparative studies → analyzing the factors pertaining to the similarities and differences - providing the implications to EFL teaching and summarizing the limitations.Through the investigation of the general results of JMSCT and FSCT, 487 errors and 560 teacher's negative feedback moves in the two samples are found. Through the comparative study, both the similarities and the differences are found in JMSCT and FSCT. The findings are summarized as follows: Distribution and frequency of errorsAmong the six error types, syntactical error is the most frequently occurred one in JMSCT (33.3%), while in FSCT, the most frequent students' error is non-understanding (32.2%); the frequencies and distributions of other error types are similar. In both JMSCT and FSCT, the phonological errors are very few, lexical errors are also seldom found. Distribution and frequency of teacher's negative feedback strategiesAmong the ten teacher's negative feedback strategies, the largest category in JMSCT is recast (21.4%), while in FSCT, the most frequently used one is explicit correction (19.3%). The second most frequently used teacher's negative feedback strategy in JMSCT is confirmation request (13.7%), while the second most frequently used teacher's negative feedback strategy in FSCT is Recast and elicitation (15.5%). Distribution and frequency of teacher's negative feedback strategies in relation to error typesThe most frequently used negative feedback strategies in relation to non-understanding in both JMSCT and FSCT are explicit correction and elicitation. In both JMSCT and FSCT, syntactical errors lead to recast most fr...
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