Classroom Interaction Analysis Types of feedback in the classroom

[ Explicit correction | Recasts | Clarification requests | Metalinguistic feedback | Elicitation | Repetition ]

 

Explicit correction

refers to the explicit provision of the correct form. As the teacher provides the correct form, he or she clearly indicates that what the student had said was incorrect:
'Oh, you mean …', 'You should say …'

 

Recasts

reformulation of all or part of a student's utterance, minus the error, … recasts are generally implicit in that they are not introduced by 'You mean …', 'Use this word …', or 'You should say …'

 

Clarification requests

indicate to students either that their utterance has been misunderstood or that it is ill-formed in some way and that a repetition or a reformulation is required. … includes phrases such as: 'Pardon me …'
It may also include a repetition of the error as in 'What do you mean by …?'

 

Metalinguistic feedback

contains comments, information, or questions related to the well-formedness … without explicitly providing the correct form.

  • metalinguistic comments generally indicate that there is an error somewhere: 'Can you find your error?'
  • metalinguistic information generally provides either some grammatical metalanguage that refers to the nature of the error: 'It's masculine.',
    • or a word definition in the case of lexical errors.
  • metalinguistic questions also point to the nature of the error but attempt to elicit the information from the student: 'Is it feminine?'

 

Elicitation

refers to at least three techniques:

  • teachers elicit completion of their own utterance: 'It's a …'
  • teachers use questions to elicit correct forms: 'How do we say x in French?'
  • teachers occasionally ask students to reformulate their utterance

 

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.

Buch 

Lightbown, Patsy M. & Spada, Nina (19992) How Languages Are Learned. Revised Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 104-106; weitere Literatur