Corrective Feedback In Comprehensive Chinese Classrooms Of Teaching Chinese As A Second Language

The present study examined error types, corrective feedback and learner uptake in comprehensive Chinese classrooms of teaching Chinese as a second language in Chongqing University. With different types of errors receiving different corrective feedback across elementary, intermediate and advanced levels, this study was interested in the discrepancies on types of errors, corrective feedback strategies and distribution of uptake following different feedback moves across different Chinese proficiency levels. The participants were 112 students of L2 Chinese in Chongqing University, aged between 18 and 27 years old from diverse countries. They were placed in 6 different classes: elementary, intermediate and advanced classes. The data comprised 1080 minutes of audio-recorded classroom talk. Since it’s a preliminary study attempting to gather information about corrective feedback practice in comprehensive Chinese classrooms, open-ended interviews about observed lessons with special attention to corrective feedback were conducted and audio-recorded.The results firstly reveal that the occurrence of errors varied across different language proficiency. In elementary classes, phonological errors are most extensively occurred, with 81% of the total. In the intermediate level, the results indicate that grammatical errors appeared most widely, with the rate of 54%. Over a half(53%) of the errors in advanced classes come from lexical errors, the choice of the words and expressions. Secondly, In terms of the occurrence of the corrective feedback moves, the results demonstrate that 67% of students’ errors received different kinds of corrective feedback from the teachers. The study finds that there is a decline in the occurrence of feedback moves with the level of Chinese proficiency improved. Among the available types of corrective feedback, teachers in the current study utilized six types of corrective feedback strategies. Recasting(61%) the student’s nonnative-like utterance is the most preferred corrective feedback choice in comprehensive Chinese courses through elementary to advanced classes. The other corrective feedback types are distributed in decreasing frequency as follows: explicit correction(17%), elicitation(9%), metalinguistic feedback(6%), clarification request(4%) and repetition(2%). Thirdly, the discrepancies of corrective feedback strategies between the four categories of the errors are examined by analysis of the data. In terms of phonological and character errors, explicit correction and recast are the most widely used strategies by the teachers. And the rate of uptake following these two strategies is relatively higher than the other strategies, all beyond 80%. As for the grammatical errors, besides recasts(56%), metalinguistic feedback(16%) and elicitation(19%) are extensively utilized by the teachers. Correspondingly, the successful uptake mainly comes from these two feedback strategies, 64% and 46% respectively. The provision of the feedback moves from teachers interacts with the students’ language proficiency.