Tasks, Corrective Feedback And Students' Modified Output In Senior High School English Classroom

Tasks have received considerable attention in the field of second language acquisition(SLA)research,given that they have been argued to provide an ideal platform for SLA.Also,the role of corrective feedback(CF)has received considerable attention from SLA researchers for the past three decades.Numerous studies have examined the links among the CF,teacher-related variables,and learner-related variables.Few studies,however,have investigated CF in relation to task-related variables.In addition,most previous studies that explore factors influencing CF have been quasi-experimental or experimental.Very few studies probe into those factors in naturally occurring teacher-student interactions in classroom settings.To bridge this gap,the current study investigates feedback patterns during naturally occurring tasks in classroom context.For this purpose,this thesis devotes to answering two core questions: Are there differences in the quantity,types of corrective feedback,opportunities for modified output,and students' actual modified output(MO):(1)between tasks and nontasks;(2)among pre-,during-and post-task phases.To solve the two core questions,this thesis analyzes data from four classes in Senior One of three senior high schools in Shanghai.Classroom observation is taken as the instrument of the research.The data consist of 28 classroom recordings,which are transcribed and further coded as tasks/non-tasks.If the data are identified as tasks,they are further divided into three task phases,namely,pre-,during-,posttask phase.In terms of the theoretical basis,the investigative concepts involved in this study originate from Ellis' s(2003)criteria,such as the definition of task and the description of task phases(pretask,during-task,posttask).The major findings are summarized as the following two aspects: Firstly,there are differences in CF provision and opportunities for modified output between tasksand non-tasks.To be specific,the quantity of CF and opportunities that teachers supply to students to reformulate their utterances in nontasks are twice as many as those in tasks.In addition,the same trend is found in occurrence of students' actual modified output.That is,students are twice as likely to seize these opportunities.As to the types of CF,teachers are about twice as likely to provide implicit feedback when students implement tasks as compared with nontasks.Secondly,there are discrepancies in terms of the quantity and types of CF as well as the opportunities for modified output between during-task phase and posttask phase.Teachers are more than twice as likely to provide feedback and opportunities for MO in the post-task phase as in the during-task phase.Apart from that,the post-task phase tends to generate implicit feedback more frequently in the post-task phase than in the during-task phase.As to the students' actual modified output,no significant association is detected between it and task phases.