Corrective Feedback And Learner Uptake In EFL Classrooms In Junior High School

Corrective feedback is an important topic in the field of foreign language teaching.Most of the previous studies of teachers' feedback concentrating on the relationship between students' error and teachers' feedback,few focusing on students' uptake(students' response to teachers' feedback).And researchers mainly studied from the theoretical perspectives and few empirical classroom interaction studies were conducted in China.This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between teachers' corrective feedback and students' uptake in EFL classrooms in junior high school,so as to provide empirical evidence for promoting the interaction between teachers and students and promoting the effect of teachers' corrective feedback.The research questions are as follows:(1)what is the distribution of different types of corrective feedback in junior high school classrooms?(2)What is the distribution of uptake following different types of corrective feedback?In order to study the above questions,six teachers from a junior high school in Guangzhou were observed and recorded in 18 EFL lessons,and all the corrective feedback episodes were transcribed.Referring to Lyster and Ranta's(1997)analytic model,the teacher's corrective feedback and student's uptake in the transcription materials were coded and analyzed.The major findings are presented as follows:(1)In addition to the six common types of corrective feedback found by Lyster and Ranta(1997),there were two common feedback types in Chinese English lessons: peer correction request and choice provision.(2)In the English classes,teachers tended to correct students' errors by recasting most frequently(38%).The frequency of other corrective feedback types are: elicitation(20%),choice provision(10%),explicit correction(8%),repetition(7%),peer correction request(7%),metalinguistic feedback(5%)and clarification request(5%).(3)In the English classes,76% of the corrective feedback led to students' uptake.Feedback of the category output-prompting resulted in much more students' uptake than that in input-providing.The corrective feedback type of output-prompting(including repetition,clarification request,metalinguistic feedback,elicitation,choice provision and peer correction request)led to the highest level of uptake(100%).Choice provision led to the highest proportion of repairs(100%).(4)Recast was the most frequent corrective feedback type,but it didn't result in any student-generated repair.Choice provision led to the highest proportion of student-generated repairs(100%).Teachers' error treatment of students in classroom teaching has an important influence on students' foreign language learning.Appropriate corrective feedback strategies can effectively attract students' attention,and then promote more and more accurate output of the target language.