A Study Of Teacher Feedback And Learner Modified Output In Naturally Occurring Classroom Interaction

The research of teacher feedback and learners’ modified output in classroom hasreceived much attention in the field of SLA in recent years. However, there was littleresearch investigating teacher feedback and task types and task focus together duringnaturally occurring classroom teacher-student interaction episodes at home. Taskfactors are significant moderator variables in the incidence and in the use ofinteraction feedback.This study examined teachers’ feedback and learners’ modified output innaturally occurring Junior Middle School classes. The research questions to beaddressed in this study are:1) Is there any difference in learner’s modified output andteacher’s feedback during task versus non-task work?2) Is there any difference inlearner’s modified output while students are engaged in focused or unfocused tasks?Data were collected from7classes which are of different grades from a Middle schoolin Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. For the7classes, each class randomly recorded twolessons expect for one class. There were13lessons recorded totally. Classroomobservation is adopted to triangle the data. After recording, teacher-students episodeswere transcribed. Tasks are divided into two types, task and non-task, focused taskand unfocused task.The results show that there is no significant difference of the amount of feedback,the feedback types and the opportunity for modified output provided by the instructorsduring tasks and non-tasks work. But the relationship between the learners’ actual MOand task types was found significant, X2=5.42, p=0.00, which means learnersproduced more actual modified output in non-task work. During focused andunfocused tasks, the results also showed no significant difference of the amount offeedback, the feedback types, the opportunity for modified output and the learners’actual MO. The results showed that task-related factors have little effects on theamount of teacher feedback, the type of teacher feedback and the amount ofopportunities for modified output, but have some effects on the learners’ actualmodified output. Although no significant difference was found between feedback typeand task types, task focus, the teachers tended to use more implicit feedback both in tasks and non-tasks work, focused tasks and unfocused tasks work, and recasts are themost frequently adopted.Based on the study, some implications can be drawn.1) It is highlight for theteachers to provide feedback to the students’ non-target-like utterance without theinterruption of the flow of students’ conversation.2) Teachers should adopt a flexiblefeedback type in class, which pushes the students to produce as much MO as possible.3) Teachers should provide the students with more opportunities for modify, so thatstudents can internalize the learned knowledge.