The type and linguistic foci of oral corrective feedback in the L2 classroom: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Research on corrective feedback (CF), a central focus of second language acquisition (SLA), has increasingly examined how teachers employ CF in second language classrooms. Lyster and Ranta's (1997) seminal study identified six types of CF that teachers use in response to students' errors (recast, explicit correction, elicitation, clarification request, metalinguistic cue, and repetition) as well as target linguistic foci (lexical, phonological, and grammatical errors). These taxonomies have remained dominant in observational studies conducted in a growing range of second language teaching contexts. Several studies have acknowledged that contextual factors may influence how teachers provide CF (e.g. Mori, 2002;Sheen, 2004) with few generalizable conclusions. The present study brings together research in this area in the first comprehensive synthesis of classroom CF research seeking to aggregate proportions of CF types teachers provide, as well as their target linguistic foci. Findings reveal that recasts account for 57% of all CF while prompts comprise 30%, and grammar errors received the greatest proportion of CF (43%). The study further identifies a range of contextual and methodological factors (i.e. moderators) that may influence CF choices across teaching contexts, such as student proficiency, teacher experience, and second/foreign language context. A clearer picture of the patterns of CF that teachers provide and the variables that influence these choices serves to complement the growing body of research investigating the efficacy of CF in second language pedagogy.

Examining Student Teachers’ Beliefs about Oral Corrective Feedback: Insights from a Teacher Education Program in Turkey

“…This is concurrent with the findings of Brown (2014), Havranek (2002), Lyster and Ranta (1997), Panova and Lyster (2002), Roothoft (2014) and Sheen (2004).…”

“…The foci of the classrooms observed might range from vocabulary, grammar to combination of speaking, listening, grammar or reading. Nevertheless, it is shown that grammar errors receive the highest proportion of correction made in classes (Brown, 2014;Havranek, 2002).…”

“…From these findings, it can be inferred that the participants tended to supply the low proficiency learners with the correct forms. However, some studies in literature show that low proficiency learners benefit less from recasts than high proficiency learners (Ammar & Spada, 2006;Brown, 2014;Li, 2013;Lyster et al, 2013). When it comes to high proficiency learners, explicit correction received the highest proportion (f=20.2, 20.6%; f=19.7, 20.1%, respectively).…”

How Big Is “Big”? Interpreting Effect Sizes in L2 Research

“…A small number of studies were excluded because the aggregated data consisted of reliability estimates rather than validity estimates (e.g., Watanabe & Koyama, 2008) or other indices could not be converted to a d or r value or that would not apply widely to other subdomains of L2 research. Such indices include variance estimates (e.g., Huang, 2009), likelihood ratios (Dollaghan & Horner, 2013), percentages (Brown, 2014), and differential item functioning units (Koo, Becker, & Kim, 2014). In addition, several reports included the term "metaanalysis" in the title but were qualitative (e.g., Peterson, 2010;Roessingh, 2004;Schwienhorst, 2002) or they included data from only a single study (e.g., Barclay, 1983); these reports were excluded as well.…”

Exploring the potential relationship between eye gaze and English L2 speakers’ responses to recasts

“…Although the data were initially coded for multiple types of feedback moves (recasts, clarification requests, repetition) and linguistic foci (grammatical, lexical, phonological, pragmatic), only grammatical recasts were considered for detailed analysis, due to their higher frequency in L2 interaction (e.g. Brown, 2014).…”