A Study Of Teachers’ Oral Corrective Feedback And Students’ Uptake In Senior High School English Class

Since the 1980 s,teacher feedback,as an important part of second language acquisition（SLA）theory and foreign language teaching practice,has attracted the attention of scholars at home and abroad continuously.The studies about SLA show that teacher feedback can obtain learners’ notice of the form of the target language in order to promote learners’ language abilities.This paper mainly studies teachers’ corrective feedback（CF）.It is the response of teachers to learners’ language errors.The studies on CF have formed a variety of themes and paths: the research on the effectiveness of teachers’ CF,the research on the CF types,the research on the CF focuses and the comparative research on the effect of different sources,etc.However,few scholars pay attention to the relationship between teachers’ CFs and students’ uptakes.It is students’ immediate responses to different types of teachers’ CFs.Most of the related studies focus on children and college students,while few studies focus on middle school students,especially high school students.The thesis chooses 2 teachers and 226 students from a senior high school in Nantong.Based on the IRF（Initiation-Response-Feedback）discourse analysis model and error analysis theory,this study uses classroom observation,questionnaire,and interview to investigate 36 lessons（1440 minutes）.It lasts for three months.It aims to answer three questions:（1）What types of learners’ error invite what types of teachers’ oral CF?（2）what types of teachers’ oral CF invite what types of students’ uptake?（3）What are students’ attitudes and preferences toward teachers’ CF? Based on data analysis,three main findings are as follows:First,phonological errors get the most CFs from teachers,while pragmatic errors get the least CFs from teachers.And recast is the most frequently used by teachers for phonological errors.Elicitation is for lexical errors.Metalinguistic feedback is for grammatical errors.Explicit correction is for pragmatic errors.Second,metalinguistic feedback,explicit correction,and elicitation rank the top three in terms of inviting the most successful uptakes.And for phonological and pragmatical errors,explicit correction invites the most uptakes.For lexical errors,elicitation leads to the most.For grammatical errors,metalinguistic feedback invites the most.Third,students have a positive attitude toward CF.Students’ favorite CF type is recast for phonological errors and metalanguage feedback for grammatical errors respectively;Explicit correction is preferred by teachers for lexical and pragmatic errors.This research has some implications for foreign language teaching.First,teachers should pay more attention to pragmatic errors.In class,teachers should not only pay attention to the form of language but also the use of language.Second,teachers are recommended to use metalinguistic feedback for grammatical errors and explicit correction for pragmatic errors.They are not only the first choice of teachers and students but also inviting the most successful uptakes.And it is appropriate to add explicit correction for phonological errors in terms of the rate of successful uptake.Third,teachers can add explicit correction for lexical errors because of students’ preferences.