Corrective feedback and learner uptake in an EFL classroom

This study, aims to find out the instances of different kinds of corrective feedback and learner uptake that are occurred during the interactions between the students and the teacher in an EFL classroom. More specifically, the study tries to find out which corrective feedback type is occurred more and which corrective feedback type leads to more learner uptake during classroom interactions. In order to answer these questions, an observational study was conducted in an EFL classroom with 10 nonnative students whose age were between 17 and 18 and a nonnative teacher who had one year of experience in teaching. The classroom interactions between the students and the teacher were recorded by the researcher during the observation. After the observation, audio recording was transcribed and analyzed by using a combination of COLT Part B (Spada and Fr？hlich, 1995) and Lyster and Ranta’s (1997) error treatment sequence as a framework. The findings revealed that there was a strong tendency in the use of recasts (52%) as corrective feedback during classroom interactions and the corrective feedback type that led to more learner uptake was clarification request (100%). While the first result of the study is similar to, the second result which is about learner uptake, differs from the previous research in the literature (Lyster and Ranta, 1997). However, the current study was limited to small sample size, limited age rage, proficiency and time and it is merely observational. Investigating learners with different ages, proficiency levels, and larger samples with longer studies appear to be fruitful for future research