Corrective Feedback Research

If the strategies used to correct errors do not meet students’ preferences, subsequent negative attitudes may emerge. This is why teachers should consider students’ preferences for being corrected (Hyland, 2003). The purpose of this study was to compare the differences between demotivated and motivated EFL learners’ preferences toward teachers’ oral error correction, including the necessity, frequency, timing, type, method, and delivering agent of error correction. To this end, 141 Iranian EFL learners at the departments of foreign language in Zabol and Sistan and Baluchestan universities participated in this study. The learners’ preferences for error correction questionnaire (Fukuda 2004), the demotivation questionnaire (Sakai & Kikuchi 2009),

And similarly, Saville-Troike (2006, p. 110) defined corrective feedback as “a type of interaction which can enhance second language acquisition by making nonnative speakers aware that their usage is not acceptable in some way and it provides a model for correctness”.

There are many researchers that give different types of corrective feedback but the most integral and comprehensive categorizations of corrective feedback has been supplied by Lyster and Ranta (1997) that classified corrective feedback into six categories, which are explicit correction, recast, metalinguistic feedback, elicitation, repetition, and clarification request. The researchers defined six types of corrective feedback including:

Recast - According to Lyster and Ranta (1997, p.46), recast defined as “the teacher’s reformulation of all or part of a student’s utterance, minus the error”. “Recasts are generally implicit in that they are not introduced by phrases such as “You mean,” “Use this word,” and “You should

46), “Teacher provides the correct form, he or she clearly indicates that what the student had said was incorrect” (e.g., “Oh, you mean,” “You should say”).

Clarification request - According to Lyster and Ranta (1997, p. 47), clarification request is defined as an indication to learners that their utterance has not been understood by teacher or that it was ill-formed and accordingly “a repetition or reformulation is required”.

Metalinguistic clues – According to Lyster and Ranta (1997, p.47), ),” it contains either comments, information, or questions related to the well-formedness of the student’s utterance, without explicitly providing the correct form”.

Repetition – refers to the teacher’s repetition, in isolation, of the student’s erroneous utterance. In most cases, teachers adjust their intonation so as to highlight the error (Lyster & Ranta, 1997, p.48).

Elicitation – It refers to strategies that teachers use to directly elicit the correct form from the learner by three techniques. 1) “Teachers elicit completion of their own utterance by strategically pausing to allow students to “fill in the blank”. 2) “Teachers use questions to elicit correct forms.” 3) “Teachers occasionally ask students to reformulate their utterance” (Lyster & Ranta, 1997, p.