Task, Corrective Feedback And Modified Output In Chinese Middle School Classroom Interaction

Much attention has been paid to corrective feedback and tasks in second languageacquisition research since1990s. In2011, English Curriculum Requirements for Junior andSenior Middle Schools was published, which stated that teachers make efforts to apply TBLT inteaching. A lot of researchers have agreed that CF has a positive effect on SLA. However, littleresearch explored the relationship among tasks, corrective feedback and modified output.Based on the Input Hypothesis, the Interaction Hypothesis and the Output Hypothesis, thepresent study investigated the relationship among tasks, corrective feedback and modified output.The corpus is from15English demonstration lessons in the8thNational Observation Seminar onMiddle School English Teaching and Learning. Our focus was on exploring teacher feedbackpatterns in relation to two task-related variables that have prominently figured in the task-basedlanguage teaching literature: task as compared to non-tasks and task phases.The findings revealed that task factors had influence on teachers’ corrective feedback andlearners’ modified output.Firstly, teachers were nearly three times as likely to supply feedback when studentsperformed non-tasks as compared to tasks. Likewise, students were approximately twice aslikely to produce modified output during non-task. Teachers were almost twice as likely tosupply prompts when students performed tasks as compared to non-tasks.Secondly, while there was no significant variation in the types of feedback (recasts andprompts) between during task and post task phase, there were significant differences in theamount of teacher feedback and learners’ modified output. Teachers were almost twice as likelyto provide feedback in the post task as in the during task stage. Likewise, students gave50%more modified output in post task phase.Based on the findings, some pedagogical implications have been concluded. First of all,when teachers are preparing the design of tasks, they should notice that form-focused activitiesand meaning-focused activities had better be combined. And teachers should provide differentkinds of corrective feedback in classroom interaction. What’s more, students’ proficiency of L2should be taken into account.