Interaction: Activity 2
Corrective feedback in interaction
Watch the following excerpts from the learners’ Interviews and the Question task. When the learners made errors, what type of feedback did the interviewer provide? How did the learners respond to her feedback? What do you think the interviewer’s intent was: was she focused on meaning or was she focused on form, trying to correct the learner? Do you think the interviewer’s feedback was effective in promoting acquisition?
Sophia Interview Transcript (PDF)
Anna B Question
Transcript (PDF)
Please type your answers to the questions in the box below.
When you have finished typing your answer, click to compare your response with the Learner Language staff response.
Sophia
Sophia receives a recast when she produces a single vowel for the word of “easy”. She pronounced it [swiʌssəyo] but it should be [swiwɔssəyo]. The interviewer recasts by providing the correct pronunciation, [swiwɔssəyo]. Sophia notices the correction and repeats the correct pronunciation in a falling tone. In other words, uptake occurs for the recast and the corrective feedback is effective in this excerpt.
Anna B
In this excerpt from the Question task, Anna B produces a nonsense term, “jeolpal” and misuses the verb “to carry” in her utterance. First, the interviewer focuses on the characteristics of the verb “to carry,” which is a transitive verb, and asks for a missing object. For this clarification request, Anna B responds by repeating the term, “jeolpal” again. Then the interviewer explicitly asks the meaning of jeolpal, so Anna B provides an alternative expression, “the men”. The interviewer understands what Anna B means and provides recasts, both for the term “policemen” and the verb “to take”. However, Anna B does not uptake both recasts and whispers only the verb to herself. Although she seems to whisper the correct form of the verb, she does not correctly conjugate it in her following turn. She does not seem to notice the correction. These recasts do not seem to be effective here because the learner does not uptake the recasts correctly. One possible problem is that she could not process two recasts at once; research by Philp (2003) shows that recasts that offer multiple changes are harder for learners to process. Also, since predicates carry grammatical information such as tense, this learner might need more explicit information to uptake and to use predicates correctly.
