Effective Corrective Feedback In Higher Vocational Technological College Form-focused EFL Classrooms

Although the facilitative role of corrective feedback has been acknowledged widely, even up till now, the issue regarding how the learner's errors should be corrected effectively has been an open question in language teaching. Thus, the present author believes it is worth moving this line forward and making a contribution to this field. So far foreign researchers have been studying effective corrective feedback from different angles, such as corrective feedback types, the relationship between feedback and learners' uptake, and the effect of feedback on learners' affect, mainly in meaning- focused ESL classrooms. Compared with the large number of empirical studies conducted at aboard, in China which English is taught in form-focused EFL classrooms, the empirical studies on effective corrective feedback are relatively limited;even if the studies have been conducted, few take higher vocational technological college (HVTC) EFL classrooms as their research settings. On the other hand, in terms of current educational situation, higher vocational technological education (HVTE) has been regarded as one of the key points of higher education reforms in our country. With the above-mentioned consideration, the present paper attempts to explore which types of corrective feedback are most effective in HVTC form-focused EFL classrooms, so that fill the gap in the literature.With regard to effective corrective feedback, this present paper attempts to explore it from students' perspectives, namely, both from students' cognitive perspectives and affective perspectives. Those that meet students' cognitive and affective needs are effective corrective feedback. To this end, this present study has experienced two stages. First, it chooses three English teachers of Grade Two from different departments and their classes in Shi Jiazhuang TV Broadcasting College as the research subjects. The present study adopts classroom observation and tape-recording to investigate the types of corrective feedback employed by teachers in class, and the effective teachers' corrective feedback by whether or not the feedbackparticipate in the semi-structured interviews on learners' attitudes towards different feedback, aiming to explore effective corrective feedback from students' affective perspectives, namely, students' preference and rationales. The findings show:(1) The three teachers observed in HVTC form-focused EFL classrooms employ at least eight types of corrective feedback in response to their students' language errors. Three of them— recast, repetition of errors and explicit correction are dominantly employed. The current findings related to the overwhelming tendency for teachers to use recast are quite similar to the previous studies in meaning-focused ESL classrooms.(2) The effective types of corrective feedback in HVTC form-focused EFL classrooms are elicitation, repetition of errors, metalinguistic feedback without the negative word "No" and recast. As is found in the majority of studies in meaning-focused ESL classrooms, elicitation, repetition of errors, metalinguistic feedback without the negative word "No" are still effective in HVTC form-focused EFL classrooms. Nonetheless, compared with the ineffectiveness of recast in meaning-focused ESL classrooms, the results of the current study prove that recast is effective in HVTC form-focused EFL classrooms.Finally, the pedagogical implications of the research are suggested.(1) HVTC English teachers should provide students with more opportunities to do their own correction by elicitation, repetition of errors, and metalinguistic feedback without negative word "No". To this purpose, it is recommended that the teachers should increase wait time, and try to be more patient with the students at fault. As to those students with too much difficulty in offering the correct utterances, the teacher can provide the correct answer in the form of recast in order to avoid further embarrassment.(2) HVTC English teachers should spend some time exploring their students' opinions/thoughts/feelings/ expectations/attitudes with regard to corrective feedback in order to help them to enhance the learning process.(3) Cultural factors can affect language learning. The face loss issue found in thepresent study suggests that, when responding to student errors, HVTC English teachers should avoid hurting students' feelings relative to their cultural sensitivities.