Feedback - Error Correction (SLA research in the classroom)

Feedback on error might be one of big issues in the EFL/ESL classroom; feedback provision allows SL learners to make progress in their ability to use the TL appropriately. Feedback is either positive or negative. Positive feedback is usually presented in the form of examples of acceptable or target-like utterances, whereas negative feedback includes information about what is not acceptable in the target language. Negative feedback may be explicit or implicit.

When I was in middle/high school, I think teacher’s feedback in classroom was mostly explicit negative feedback. However, nowadays, the emergence of communicative and content-based teaching approaches brought about some changes in the way feedback techniques are used in the classroom. There is now a shift from explicit negative feedback, which may lead to negative affective reactions on the part of the learners, to implicit negative feedback. One widely used implicit negative feedback technique in instructed second language acquisition is the recast- the teacher’s correct restatement of a learner’s incorrect utterance.

I am very interested in feedback in SLA based on my experiences. In my case, explicit negative feedback especially in interactional classroom activities made me intimidated and further increased my reluctance to use the target language. Moreover, I remembered when I received explicit feedback especially during speaking in English, sometimes, that led to negative affective reactions. I got embarrassed, demotivated, and developed passive attitudes towards the use of the target language. Those experiences urged me to try to find an alternative feedback technique that is more conducive to students. This is not to say that explicit negative feedback is useless however. In ESL class, if there is no explicit feedback, it may be increase for students encourage to use target language, but they may never learn real usege of the target language.

To satisfy my curiosity, I need to read more researches. It might be helpful to write my final paper.