The relationship between learners' oral errors and teachers' corrective feedback in three EFL classes

Abstract

This study sought to provide a description of how EFL students' oral errors are treated by three EFL teachers. This study had four research questions. Three EFL teachers (from BUSEL, Bilkent University School of English) participated in this study. Two lessons of each teacher were recorded and analyzed using Chaudron's (1988) taxonomy of corrective feedback types and Chaudron's (1986) definitions of error types. Frequencies were tabulated for feedback types and error types. The first research question was how frequently and which oral errors of learners are corrected. The data revealed that the three teachers corrected 57% of the total oral errors. Of these errors, 88% were content errors, 86% were discourse errors, 64% were lexical errors, 46% were linguistic errors, and 25% were phonological errors. The second research question was what types of corrective feedback are used by EFL teachers. The data showed that the three teachers used eighteen types of feedback: 'ignore', 'acceptance', 'delay', 'provide', 'loop', 'interrupt', 'questions', 'attention', 'explanation', 'negation', 'repetition with change', 'complex explanation', 'prompt', 'transfer', 'repetition with no change', 'emphasis', 'repeat', and 'exit'. The third research question investigated the relationship between error types and corrective feedback types. A simple calculation of frequencies of feedback types for corrected errors revealed that phonological errors were responded to mostly with the type 'provide' (71%). The teachers also tended to prefer using the type 'provide' for discourse errors (46%). Teachers used the feedback type 'delay' as most frequently for linguistic and lexical errors, 27% and 44% respectively. However, no dominant preference for any feedback type was found for treating content errors. The fourth research question sought to find the differences between the three teachers in correcting errors. Three teachers tended to correct different amounts of errors, though two of the teachers corrected similar amounts of errors. The teachers corrected 50%, 55%, and 66% of total oral errors. For feedback types teachers did not show great differences, they all used the feedback types 'ignore', 'acceptance', 'delay', 'provide', and 'loop' most frequently. Only teacher B used the type 'explanation' more frequently than the other teachers. There also appeared differences in the teachers' feedback type preferences for certain types of error. The three teachers used different feedback types for content errors; teacher A used the type 'negation' (27%), teacher B used the type 'questions'( 25%), and teacher C used the types 'delay' (33%) and 'attention' (20%). For discourse errors, teacher A and B used the type 'provide' most frequently but teacher C used the types 'negation' and 'loop' most frequently. No major difference was found in three teachers' feedback preferences for other types of error.