Corrective Feedback In Second Language Acquisiton

Luz Angela Gonzalez

During the last decades, an often controversial line of theoretical and empirical research has been developed on corrective feedback (CF) and its impact on Second Language Acquisition (SLA). A significant question mark on the field of TEFL is whether to provide learners with only positive evidence or to expose them to negative evidence as well. Therefore, in this paper, the meaning of CF will be discussed, and the different theoretical positions towards its role in SLA studied.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Firstly, the audio-lingual approach promotes the non-tolerance of students' errors and suggests to control the linguistic contexts and to minimize errors. On the other hand, the natural and the communicative approach consider the unnecessary and counter-productive corrective feedback. After the growth of the communicative approach at the beginning of the 80s, principally in the United States and in Great Britain (Spada and Fröhlich, 1995), the fluency and the expression of the meaning were emphasized and the need of error correction wanted to be omitted. During the last years, the interest in the issue of corrective feedback in Teaching English as a Foreign Language has increased. Many researchers of acquisition of the second languages have explored such aspects as the different kinds of feedback, learner uptake, perceptions and effects of corrective feedback. Recent research has demonstrated that even in environments of communicative learning, where the approach centers principally in the meaning, teachers spend considerable time and energy to corrective feedback (Han, 2001). Different terms have been developed when referring to error: negative evidence (acquisition of the language), negative feedback (cognitive psychology), and corrective feedback (education of the language). According to Chaudron (1988), the term correction demands a variety of meanings, but the treatment of error is the most common. He established that the term "treatment of the mistake" basically refers to "any teacher behavior following an error that minimally attempts to inform the learner of the fact of error". Lightbown and Spada (1999) define corrective feedback as "any indication to the learners that their use of the target language is incorrect". For example, when a learner says 'They buy a car yesterday', the corrective feedback might be explicit (for example, 'No, you should say "bought", not "buy") or implicit (for example, 'Yes, they bought a car yesterday'), and metalinguistic information which provides learners with some form of explicit comment about the nature of the errors they have made (for example, 'you need to make the verb agree with the appropriate tense'). The error is considered as a natural and necessary part of the acquisition of the language. When someone learns another language, the errors that commits indicate the level of competence. Undoubtedly, the errors of a beginner are more frequent and different from the errors of an advanced learner. The corrective feedback facilitates the development of learning English as a second language, since it provides opportunities to the learners in order to noticing the differences between output (produced information) and input (received information) across the negotiation of the meaning (Long, 1996).

MAIN FINDINGS

The corrective feedback and the learners' responses have attracted lately the attention of different researchers due to the conditions that they (corrective feedback and students' responses) might create in order to facilitate the acquisition of the second language. Lyster and Ranta (1997) studied four teachers' behaviors belonging to a French program as a second language. They were particularly interested in finding what types of treatment of error encourage to the learners to be corrected by themselves. Lyster and Ranta concluded that learners' self-correction is important when learning a second language, because these corrections indicate an active participation of the students in the learning process. This active participation happens when there is negotiation of the form, or when the students have to think and answer to the feedback. And this negotiation of the form happens when the teacher does not provide the correct form and, instead, gives clues to help the learners to consider how to re-formulate the incorrect use of the language.

These researchers found out that the teachers of their study provide corrective feedback using modifications more than the half of the time (55 %). The feedback by means of the induction was given in 14 % of the cases; the requests of explanation in 11%; the metalinguistic feedback in 8 %, the explicit correction in 7 %; and the repetition in 5 %. Based on the detailed transcri ptions of the interaction of the class, Lyster and Ranta concluded that the modifications were used seldom to produce a response in the students of French as L2.

Selinker (1992) affirms that the errors are important components when learning a language and must be corrected to help the students in the precision in the production of the studied language. The learners prefer receiving feedback of their teachers and also they feel inclination for a certain style of feedback that they personally find more effective. According to Panova and Lyster (2002), the learners point out that they take into account, the explicit forms in which they have felt pressed to the self-correction, more than the forms that are modified implicitly by the teachers without they notice it. In a similar way, Ellis (1991) shares the vision that the process of acquisition includes the steps of noticing, comparing and integrating.

Regarding to the Latin-American context as Colombia, there is very few documentation of what really happens, even in the post-secondary level of English as a foreign language`s classes. Schulz (2001) led two studies based on the beliefs of the Colombian and American teachers concerning the benefits of the explicit instruction of the grammar and of the error correction in the learning of foreign languages. She concluded that a good number of discrepancies were evident between learners and teachers' beliefs and between the cultures North American and Colombian. The students of both cultures believe that correction is essential when learning a foreign language. They also consider the teacher as the expert connoisseur and the one that must assume the error correction. Nevertheless, the group of teachers and Colombian students inclines favorably towards efficiency of the error correction.

PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

Feedback from teachers to learners' errors is necessary in the process of the acquisition of a second language and might provide teachers with current information about the condition of the learner's interlanguage. The errors might be significant in three ways: (1) they provide teachers with information about how much the student has learnt, (2) they provide the researcher with evidence about how a language is learnt and, (3) learners discover the appropriate rules of the second language.

Based on the literature reviewed above, it seems that corrective feedback can have an impact on learners' interlanguage systems if it is provided properly; teachers are required to assess learners' needs, analyze the nature of error, and employ a strategy that signals the provision of feedback and makes learners notice a mismatch between their output and the target form. However, corrective feedback in a limited period is not sufficient for learners to maintain its effect. Teachers need to be methodical and consistent when giving feedback. The corrective feedback provided must be clear enough to be perceived as such. The methods employed must allow for time and opportunity for self-repair and modified output. The feedback must be fine-tuned in the sense that there should be as close a match as possible between the teacher's intent, the targeted error, and the learner's perception of the given feedback. The feedback provided should focus on one error at a time; over a period of time. The learner's developmental readiness to process the feedback provided should be taken into consideration. It is essential to evaluate the level of proficiency of the foreign language in which the learners are, before starting a course and teaching what is adapted for every stage. This point of view contemplates that the learners are in the appropriate level with the aim of processing the corresponding feedback and acquiring new structures. The students must not worry too much because they are committing errors. They need to assume that errors are a part of a process of development that is given from their mother language to the second one. It is important to develop a practice of class with a more tolerant approach towards the errors without correcting immediately the learners but to encourage them to a self-correction. REFERENCES Ellis, R. (2009). Corrective feedback and teacher development. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2504d6w3

Ellis, R. Loewen, S. and Erlam R. Implicit and explicit corrective feedback and the acquisition of L2 grammar. University of Auckland. Mounira, E. Corrective feedback in second language acquisition. Columbia university.http://journal.tc-library.org/index.php/tesol/article/viewFile/160/158 Schulz, R. A. (2001). Cultural differences in student and teacher perceptions about the role of grammar instruction and corrective feedback: USA-Colombia. Modern Language Journal