Luận văn an exploratory research on teachers’ oral corrective feedback and students’ uptake in english speaking classes at binh minh high school in ninh binh

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES Ấn kh & & kế hết & AN EXPLORATORY RESEARCH ON TEACHERS’ ORAL CO

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

Ấn kh & & kế hết &

AN EXPLORATORY RESEARCH ON TEACHERS’ ORAL CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK AND STUDENTS’ UPTAKE LN ENGLISH SPEAKING CLASSES AT BINH MINH HIGH SCHOOL

IN NINH BINH

(NGHIÊN CỨU THĂM DÒ VÉ VIỆC CHỮA LỖI NÓI CỦA GIÁO VIÊN

VÀ SỰ TIẾP NHẬN CỦA HOC SINH TRONG GIO NOT TIENG ANH TẠI

'TRƯỜNG TIIPT BÏNI MINH, TỈNI NINI BÌNI)

MLA MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Ficld: English Teaching Mcthodology

Code: 60140111

Hanoi - 2016

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOL UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

HRRARARRHRRAERERE

PHAM THI HONG

AN EXPLORATORY RESKARCH ON TEACHERS’ ORAL

CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK AND STUDENTS’ UPTAKE LV ENGLISH SPEAKING CLASSES AT BINH MINH HIGH SCHOOL

1N NINH BÌNH

(NGHIÊN CỨU THĂM DÒ VỀ VIỆC CHUA LOI NOI CUA GIÁO VIÊN

VÀ SỰ THÉP NHẬN CỦA HỌC SHNH TRONG GIỜ NÓI TIENG ANL TAL

TRUONG THPT BINH MINH, TINH NINH BÌNH)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Assvc Prof, Dr Lé Van Canh

Hanoi - 2016

DECLARATION

1, Pham Thi Hong, the candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (TEFL) certify that this graduation thesis is entirely my own work [ accept all the requirements of University relating to the retention and use of Master's Graduation paper deposited in the library I have provided fully documented references to the work of others ‘Ihe material in this paper has not been submitted for assessment in any other formal courses of study

Hanoi, 2016

Pham Thị Hỗng

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Tn the completion of this paper, T owe a greal deal of guidance, assintance

and encouragement to a number of people

First of all, T would like to express my deopest thanks and gratitude la my supervisor Le Van Canb, PhD for his valuable instructions, tireless assistance and

critical comments, without which this thesis could never have been completed

Ocean thanks go to my colleagues, who are teachers of Unglish at Bink Minh high school as well as 11th građe students at the same school for their cooperation

in helping me to get precious data

Last but not least, I owe special thanks to my family and my friends for their encouragement and continual support during the implementation of Ux: study They

are so supportive to my work, without which this paper could not have been fulfilled,

ABSTRACT

Tn consideration of the importance of oral corrective feedback in Leaching language, this paper aims at finding out the patterns of giving corrective feedback among teachers in speaking classes and the uptake of students To obtain the objective, T bave cbserved and recorded a tumber of speaking classes of the 11th grade at a high school in Ninh Binh ‘The findings of this study indicate that there are differences in the frequency of using of various types of oral feedback They

also indicals that all teachers use muliple feedback quile frequently to help their

students to take repair or successful uptake Last but not least, the uptake pattem is also various Recast seem to be most frequently used but with least uptake whereas cheiation, expheiation and multiple feedback seem lo be the most successful i

resulting in uptake

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION

TV Methods of the study

V Scope of the study

VI Significances of the study

VIL, Structure of the study

1.2.1 Definition of teachers’ feedback

1.2.2 Typos of teachers’ fecdback sestneesseenetne sonst sen

1.3 Oral corrective feedback and uptake

1.3.1 Delinilion of oral corrective feedback

1.3.2 Techniques used in oral corrective feedback

1.3.3 Leamers’ uptake

1.3.4 Studies on leacher’s corrective Feedback and leamner’s uptake m

Second Language ÀoquisÏtion cọ trọn the

2.1 The context of the study

2.1.1 The research site

2.1.2 The lexthook

2.1.3 The participants

2.2 Data collection instruments

23 Procedures

2.3.1, Procedures of data collection

2.3.3 Procedures of data analysis

Limilations of the slady

Suggestions for further studies

PART A: INFRODUCTION

L Rationales

Nowadays, English plays an imporlant rale in socio-ceonomic life Learning

English is necessary for many people The central goal of teaching and learning is students’ development of four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing Of

these four skills, speaking is probably the most dillicult for learners lo develop

because it requires them to produce the language most of the time spontaneously or

without enough time to construct appropriate and correct utterances

Over a long period, considerable allention has been paid to errors and emor

correction in speaking classes (Ills, 1994) Different authors have different views

Some consider an error as something natural They claim that people cannot avoid

amaking errors and even can learn [rom than Making errors is apart of learning, and

error correction should be done selectively in order to have better results in the

classroom Others, however, regard an error as something negative which must be avoided As a consequence, language (cavhors have always adopted a repressive

attitude towards it, They usually hold most authority to correct Jearners’ ercors

automatically, regarding the fact that learners value an] expect teachers’ correction

To most language teachers, correcting leamers’ oral cirors 1s one of the most

frustrating tasks because it has more potential for subjectivity due to individual

variables (Cohen, 1998) In considermg the individual variables as m{lucntial paris

in speaking, error correction is highly challenging and possibly perplexing Therefore, exror correction should be done appropriately; lest, it will discourage leamers from leaming and practicing the language

It should be noted that although error correction has been the focus of research for a

long time, a large number of authors have concentrated mostly on the causes of

eros, whelhier lo correct oral error or not and the lechniques to correct errors:

Llowever, there is little research dealing with appropriate error-correction strategies

in general and in speaking classes in particular

The above situation of omer comection in speaking classes and the gap of imowledge in the research area have aroused my interest and encouraged me to garry out he study entiled: “An exploratory research on icachers’ oral corrective feedback and students’ uptake in English speaking classes at Binh Minh high school

in Ninh Binh”

Current learning and teaching at Binh Minh high school in Ninh Binh

Binh Minh high school is situated in a rural area by the sea It has 30 classes with a

total 1,140 students Most of the students are from working olass families Despite

the fact that, Enghsh is a compulsory subject and one of the required examinations

the students have to pass in order to be qualified for the General Lducation Diploma and the fact that English is going to be the language of instruction used at natural science classes according lo “The Project of Forcign Language Education in

the National Education System for the period 2008-2020”, the majority of students

at Binh Minh high school still pay little attention to this subject As a result, the

quality of teaching and learning Fnglish in this school is slill nol very high

Normally, at Binh Minh high school, students in each class have three periods

learning English with the English textbook and one optional period for extra couscliation every week Teachers are the only ones who takes the responsibility of

teaching the subject at school, There is no foreign teacher here

IL Aims of the Study

‘The major aim of the research is to find out error-correetion strategies teachers used

in speaking lessons and the influence of those strategies on students’ uptake To be specific, the objectives of this thesis are

+ to explore teachers’ oral exer correction

+ to find out the oral corrective techniques that teachers frequently used in

the contex| of a Ingh svhool

+ to gain understanding of the reasons behind teachers use of oral corrective feedback techniques

+ To find out whether all types of ocrrective feedback are equally effective

in leading to students’ uptake

+ to offer some recomrnendations on giving oral corrective Feedback in

speaking lessons

Li Research Questions

To nchieve the aims of the sludy, the following three research questions ara

addressed:

1 What are the common oral corrective feedback techniques teachers use in English

speaking lessons for the 11 grade students?

2 What reasons do teachers give for their use of oral corrective feedback

technique(s)?

3 Which of the oral corrective feedback techniques the leachers use Iead to

students’ most uptake?

IV Methods of the Study

As an exploratory study, this sludy used the quantitalive method as (he main incans

of studying, Besides, with a view to analysing the information from the post

observation personal inlerviews, the qualitative method is also eruployed Firstly, the researcher reviews the related documents, wluch is a method to lay the

theoretical background for the study ‘Then during the study, the data are collected

‘by means of classroom observation and further information is oblained from face-

to-face interviews Data were then analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively with the aim of identifying the patterns of oral corrective feedback used by the observed

teachers and the reasons why teachers used the corrective feedback as observed

V Scope of the Study

Language generated by leamers in either speech or writing is considered productive

Frrors occur in eilher speaking or writing lessous Due to the limits of time, ability

and availability of the data, the study limits itself to the exploration of the types of oral corrective feedback that are commonly used by the teachers in speaking lessons and the uptake of students toward cach type of oral corrective fecdback

As the intended scope of the study, data for this rescarch were collected from the

observation of Linglish speaking lessons taught to the 11'" grade students at Bimh Minh high school in Ninh Binh, and the personal mlerviews after the observation

VI Significance uf the Study

Leamers’ errors are significant to both IIL teaching and leaning, for errors are evidonoe oŸ their learning development, This thesis, therefore, will contribule a new implication to second language acquisition (SLA), particularly, to the area of error correction in speaking classes Pedagogically, information obtained from this study tnight help teachers of Fnglish get insights into oral errors and oral error correction: rom this they adjust their teaching and apply appropriate error-carrection strategies

to make error-correction more effective Personally, the researcher as a language teacher, will have a good command of the process of leaching and learning FFT in general and errors and error correction in speaking lessons in particular These will help to enhance the teaching efficiency

VIL Structure of the Study

The study consisis of three tai parts

This part is organized into three chapters

Chapter 1: Literature Review

‘This chapter deals with various concepts relevant to the research topic such es an errors which reviews the definitions of errors as well as types of errors, teacher” feedback, oral corrective feedback and uptake This chapter also presents the findings of some significant researches on oral corrective feedback and immediate

uptake.

Chapter 2: Rescarch Methodology

‘This chapter presents the situation of teaching and learning Lnglish, the facts of error correction in the 11" form speaking lessons al Binh Minh High School and general information about the study subjects It also focuses on the data collection instruments, data procedures and data analysis

Chapter 3: Findings and Discussion

‘This chapter presents the main findings of the research and the discussion made from the obtained results

Part C: Canclusion

This part consists of the sumary of the research, recommendations, hmilalions and

suggestions for furthor study.

PART B DEVEOPMENT CUAPTER E LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Error definition

In this study, the researcher adapted the term “error” defined by Hendrickson (1978:387) that is “an utterance, form or structure a particular language teacher seems unacceptable because of ils inappropriate use or ils absence in reading discourse” ‘This definition is adopted because it fits the purpose of the study, which looks into teachers’ oral corrective feedback When the teacher find the student’s language unacceplable, she will consider if as an error and will correct it

1.2 Teacher’s feedback

1.2 1 Definition of teacher's feedback

Tn the context of teaching and learning languages, various definitions of the term feedback have been proposed Most of these definitions indicate that feedback refers to informing leamers about their work in progress More specifically, this

form of interaction shows leamers their errors and guides them io correc! their work

(Ur, 1996, Lewis, 2002) An important point that needs consideration concerns the

purpose of providing feedbacks, according lo Lewis (2002), “A good feedback is

given without personal judgment or opimion, given based on the facts, always

neutral and objective, constructive and focus on the future” (p.7) Llowever, 1 am nol in agreement wilh Lewis’s definition because teachers can hardly provide feedback without their personal judgment Also, it is almost impossible to judge the neutrality of teacher feedback

In another sense, feedback is defined as “a method used openly, and with

xespousibility, to express one’s view with the aim of facilitating or promoting more appropriate actions in the future, in relation to a goal and a vision” (Nive & Nilsson, 2004) Littlewood (1981), sharing the same idea According to him, feedback is telling learners about their peformance and showing them errors in

order to guide them to areas for improvement From those above definitions 1t can

‘be conchided that feedback is beneficial to be provided for students to improve their

performance from what they have leamt

1.2.2 Types of teacher’s feedback

Ellis, (1999-702) divides feedback into positive feedback and negative feedback

In this point of view, the author defines positive feedback as what the teacher use to

praise sludents for doing a good job, helping them devclop good self-confidence

when learning a second language In the same light, the author defines negative

feedback as the information given to the learners which they can use to revise their

interlanguage Negative feedback, or correstive feedback in school is most often used when a teacher gives a student some kind of information about something

being incorrect in an utterance and sometimes also instruction about how to correct

the mislake

Judging feedback in the other light, Rodgers (2001) and Richards (1992) agree

that there are immediate feedback and delayed feedback Immediate feedback is the

one which refers lo leachers’ comments delivered on the spol when a mistakes or a

good point is made by students Rodgers (2001) proposes that this type of feedback

is mostly employed by teachers when the aim of the slage of the lesson is to promote accuracy, particularly during the drilling of the target language and during

guided practice, Richards(1992) also points out that spontaneous correction can help

learners aware of the mistake slraighL away The advanlages of using immediate

feedback are that it enables teachers to give support or encouragement when

students are confused about their making mistakes, when students need to be

motivated and also the opportunity for immediate feedback to make sure the

amessage was understood However, immediate feedback has also a weakness that is miscommunication Sometimes what the students hear is not what is meam The

simplest words, for example, have a different conmolalion for the studenks Richards

et al (1992) puts emphasis on the fact that sometimes this kind of feedback

discourages learning form speaking as they may feel that every word in their speech

is beimg judged Another (ype of fecdback is delayed feedback which is nol in the

fluoncy stage of a speaking lesson In this case, delayed feedback should take place Seeing that spontaneous feedback can backfire sometimes, it is suggested that techniques of delivering should be employed Penny Ur (2006) (ciled in Nguyen,

2009) recommended that spontaneous feedback should be “unobtrusive” to avoid

the interruption students’ “flow” Anther point as stated by Richards & Rodgers (2001) who may distinguish on-the-spot [rom delayed feodback is thal whereas the former one tends to be used for individuals” performance, the Jater is for group

work Although delayed feedback has the advantage that it is not backfire the students, this one also has the weakness Teachers give delayed feedback afier the students’ performance, it means that the feedback is too late to be received by the

students And in the speaking activity sometimes students forget the mistakes that they have made

From all the above theoritical knowledge about feedback, this exploratory study

limits itselt to the teachers immediate oral corrective feedback occuring in teaching

speaking skill The other types, forms and sources of feedback are beyond the

research

1.3 Oral corrective feedback and uptake

13.1, Definition of oral corrective feedback,

Although the provision of oral corrective feedback in the foreign language

classroom scems nalural in the process of learning # language, the rale thal it plays

in the classroom and the attitudes language teachers have towards it have been not the same through the years, or even from one teacher to another On the other hand,

in the theoretical ground, oral corrective feedback has also heen an area of research

and discussion in language acquisition and leaming over the last decades

For the sake of clarity, one of the first definitions of oral corrective feedback is thal of Chadron (1977) who considers it as “any reaclion of the teacher which

clearly transforms, disapprovingly refers to, or demands improvement of the leamer utterance” (P-31) Other synanyms of corrective feedback more commonly used are

“error cormection”, “negalive evidence”, negalive feedback” However, Han (2008)

suggests that crror correction implies an evident and dircet comcetion, whereas corrective feedback is a more general way of providing some clues, or eliciting

some coreetion, besides the direct correction made by the teacher Ellis Lowe and

rian (2006) describe corrective feedback as follows:

Corrective feedback takes the form of responses to learner utterances that

contain error The responses car consist of (a) an indication that an error bas

been committed, (b) provision of the correct target language form, or (c) met

linguistic information about the nature of the error, or any combination of these

(p:340)

‘This definition is adopted in this study because the study focuses on teachers’ oral corrective feedback, which may be signaling the error, directly correcting, the error,

or telling the relevant rules to the learner who made [he error

13.2 Techniques used in oral corrective feedback

Among many suggested techniques, this research adapted the classification of Lyster and Randa (1997) which suggests six techniques im oral corrective feedback,

ordered according to the degree of explicitness, namely recast, clarification request,

repetition, elicilalion, melahinguistic feedback and explicil correction

Recast

Lyster and Ranta (1997) define recast as “the teacher’s reformulation of all or part

of a student's ufierance, minus the error” (p.46) Spanda and Frotitich (1995, cited

in Lyster and Randa 1997) also refer to such reformulation as ‘paraphrase’ Recasts are generally implicit in that they are not introduced by phrases such as “You

mean”, “Use this word”, and “You should say” Recasts also inchide translations in

response to a student’s use of the L1 (Lyster and Randa, 1997)

Clarification request

According to Spanda and Froblich (1995 cited in TLyster and Randa, 1997),

clarification is the way the teacher indicates to students either that their utterance has been misunderstood by the teacher or that the utterance is ill-formed in some

way and thal a ropelition or a reformulalion is required This is a feedback type (hal

can sefer to problems in either comprehensibility or accuracy, or both, A clarification request included phrases such as “Pardon me”, or “What do you mean

by ” (Lyster and Randa, 1997)

Repetition

The teacher repeats the student’s error and changes intonation to draw student's

altention io it, For example: Student: “My father enjoys watch football matches on

‘.V.” Teacher: “Watch?” (together with raising the intonation)

Elicitation

The teacher directly ehetts the correcl form from the student by asking questions

(eg “Llow do you say that in linglish?”), by pausing to allow the student to complete the teacher’s utterance, or by asking the student to reformulate his or her

ulierance (c.g “Please say thal again”)

Metalinguisne feedback

This technique contains either comments, information, or questions related to well-

formedness of the student's ulferance, without explicilly providing the corre! form:

Metalinguistic information generally provides either some grammatical

mittalanguage that refers 10 the nature of the error (e.g, “Ts masculine” or a word definition in the case if lexical errors Metalinguistic questions also point to the

nature of the error but attempt to elicit the information from the student (e.g., “Is it

fominine?”), (Lyster and Randa, 1997)

Uplake is a construct thal is closely related to provision of coective feedback

Slimani (1992) defines uptake as “what leamers claim to have learned from a

particular lesson”

While drawing on learners’ reaction in studics of corrective feedback, uptake is defined as “a student’s utterance that ummediately follows the teacher’s feedback

and that conslilules a reaction in some way to the teacher’s intenlion to draw attention to some aspects of the students’ initial utterance”, (Lyster & Ranta, 1997,

p 19), Uptake, in this sense, is used as a way of evaluating the effectiveness of

focdback lypes which can be divided into two categories namely ‘repair’ and ‘needs

repair’ (Lyster & Ranta, 1997, p, 49) These two authors went further in their

classification of repair and classified it further into two categories: self -initiated

vepair and other-initiated repair Other — imiliale repair is usually prompled by

provision of some sort of feedback to the leamer ‘the feedback can be provided by either a teacher or other students (peer — feedback) in response to an error

Tra nutshell, uptake, in general, is a very imporlanl part of the limguage acquisition

process and Loewen (2004) noted many researchers are interested in examing uptake and linking it to the language leaming process

13.4 Previous studies on teacher's oral corrective feedback and learner?s uptake in Second Language Acquisition

There have been many researches conducted regarding the provision of language

corrective feedback including uptake In order to better waderstand the rescarches

that have been done in the last decades, this part of the literature review presents the

findings of some significant researches on language corrective feedback and

immediate uptake

Allwright and Bailey's (1991) investigated the effectiveness of types comective

feedback ranging from implicit te explicit ones and came to the argument on the

uselessness of implicit teclniques when leamers cannot perceive their utterances as

erroneous and they are in need of more indicators and information about their error

Carrol and Swain (1993) examined effects af different types of negative feedback

on the acquisition of linglish dative alternation by 100 adult Spanish-speaking LLL leamers They found that proups receiving negative feedback performed significantly belter than the conlrel group, which received no feedback They also

found that groups that received explicit rule oxplanation performed significantly better compared to other groups One possible explanation that the authors provided was (hal adult language learners require more explicit explanation because ol their previous learning preferences Their study suggests that feedback is an important part of the language leaming process Ilowever, it appears that there is still not defirrite agreement on whelher the age of learners or lype of input impacts Ihe

retention of language structures

Lyster and Ranta (1997) presented a study of classroom interaction and classified

various types of corrective feedback used by teachers in response Lo learner errors

‘The percentage distribution of the six feedback types was : recasts 55 %; elicitation

14 %; clarification requests 11 %; metalinguistic clues 8%; explicit correction 7 %; repetition of error 5 % (cited from Lystor 1998a: 189) Obviously, most icachers like to use recast (55 %) In term of leading to leamer uptake, these two authors

found that recast, although used extensively in the studied classrooms, was least

likely 10 Jead to successful student uptake They claimed thal other types of

corrective feedback resulted in more negotiation of form between a teacher and the

learner and therefore resulted in orore cases of sludent imiGated successful uptake

tung,

Ina follow up study, Lyster (1998b) focused more on recast because this corrective stralogy was used abmost exlousively by the language immersion programs L.ysler

used the same database of classroom cbservations that he used for his previous

study The findings of the previous study made him believe that teachers need to

implement other feedback techniques such as meta-linguistic, elicitation and

clarification request, to provide stadents with corrective feedback regarding their output The author compared teacher use of recast with various types of non-

corrective repetition and posilive feedback pproval moves Lyster suggesled that

extensively by teachors in immersion programs is this type of feedback allows them

to provide leamers with feedback on their performance without interrupting the

course of the classroom interaction Howe’

cr, he admiticd that roasts do nol give

much negotiation of forn between the teacher and the learner and therefore, it does

not permit the learners a chance to process information at a deeper level and

incorporate the correel niteranee in their language performance Schachter, (1974)

and Carroll (1993), shared the same results of the same objectives that recasts can

be ambiguous so it can be hard for leamers to notice their corrective intent,

especially itt a classroom environment and especially to the learners of lower levels

of proficiency (Mackey et al., 2000, 2007) provided another reason that the focus

on meaning of the activities might be constraining leamers’ attention to form, and

3o, they do nol capture the corrective nalure of relormulation Reeenily, several

meta-analyses have been published, which all indicate a positive role for corrective feedback for the acquisition of second language grammar (Russell & Spada , 2006,

Mackey & Goo, 2007; Li, 2010, Lyster & Saito, 2010;) These authors have tried to

observe how corrective feedback really works in classrooms and how leamers

respond to it, Unlike the aforementioned studies, lis et al (2001) examined the

issue of feedback provision in relationship to Ieamer uptake in English as the

second language classrooms and reported much higher uptake in response to teacher

corrective feedback The data were analyzed based on classroom observations,

including focus on form episedes , treatments, and learner uptake ‘The findings indicated that the general level of uptake was much higher in this study, compared

to studies by Lyster and Ranta (1997) and Lyster (1998) The study also showed

that when students identified language problems by themselves, the uptake was

higher and more successful The researchers, vmlike others, suggested that teachers

should not avoid rec

Las acorective feedhack technique Lysler (2002) also came

to the conclusion that student-generated repair following teachers’ provision of

elicitation involves a different level of processing than teachers’ recast.

In another vein to explore the effectiveness of recasts in foreign language teaching,

Sheen’s (2004) study, found that recasts are not effective to the extent that students

qnight mistake them for von-correelive repelitions

Ammar and Spada (2006), and Lyster & Mori (2006) investigated the effects of

recasts and prompts on Jeamers’ oral ability across different proficiency levels and

found that prompls were more effective than recasis and thal the effectiveness of

xecasts was sensitive to learues” proficiency level In particular, high-proficiency leamers benefited equally from prompts and recasts, whereas low-proficiency

learners benefited significarily more from prompts than recasts In a more recemt

study, Lyster & Izquierdo (2009) probed the impact of recast and prompts on the acquisition of grammatical gender among French leamers and claimed that both

types of feedback are effective Learners of recasis beneliled from repeated

exposure to positive exemplars as well as from opportunities to infer negative evidence, whereas, learners receiving prompts or clarification requests benefited from repealed exposure to negative cviderice as well as from opportunities to

produce modified output

Both immediate and delayed effects of two other types of imeraclion feedback, Le

recasts vs clicitations were also examined by Nassaji (2009) which signified that in

both comective feedback types, the more explicit form was more effective than its

implivit (orm Therefore, the degree of explicit was reported Lo be very crugial in

the effectiveness of these two types of comective feedback

Galina Kavaliauskiene (2012), discovered im his case study that students prefer

immediate correction of errors in spite of its impracticality and claim that individual

correction of mistakes by teacher is useful Differences between the responses of

students who study two disciplines were slight and attitude to feedback do not differ

gnificarly — specialization is not very relevati He also believed thai by making the students aware of the mistakes they make, and by getting them to act on those

mistakes in some way, the students will assimilate the corrections and eventually

nol make those sane mistakes in (he Culture.

In short, teacher's corrective feedback and student's uptake was uutially a fertile

area of research in language teaching studies A large number of studies have been dove in sn allernpl 10 examine the relalionship between teacher’s corrective feedback and learner’s uptake in language teaching and learning , and to determine

the effectiveness of different types of corrective feedback on different levels of

proficiency and different purposes of learning language

1.4 STIMMARY

This chapter presents a brief understanding of language errors, feedback, teacher's

corrective feedback and learner’s uptake TL also presents the discussion of teacher’ s

corrective feedback and student's uptake in previous studies As being mentioned before, comective is a very important part of leaming and instructional process, it provides the learner with ossontial information on his/her perlormmec There has

‘been much research conducted in the area of foreign language acquisition, however,

researchers still debate the question of which type of feedback is the most effective

This question is especially important in the arca of foreign language acquisition, where errors are part of daily classroom ‘Therefore, it is important for teacher to

have much information on the issue of corrective feedback provision and ils

effcetivencss in terms of student learning

Krom the light of the aforementioned knowledge, this study aims at examining the paticm of teacher’s oral corrective feedback and Tearner’s uplake im anv upper secondary school with a view to finding whether the findings of those precedent

authors are coincided with the case studied, and what possibly accounts for the

similarities or the differences.

CHAPTER TI: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

‘This chapter presents the setting of the study, participants, data collection

instruments, data collection procedures and data analysis

2.1 The context of the study

2.1.1 The research context

Binh Minh High School, founded in 1994, is located in Binh Minh town, a small town by the sca of Kim Son districl, Ninh Binh province This public school has 30 classes with over 80 teachers of different subjects Currently there are approximately 1.150 students of three grades: 10, 11, and 12 Rach grade has 10 classes On the average, lbere arc about 35 lo 40 students in a class, Most of the students come from the nearby villages

The number of students im the 11 grade are 370 The inajorily of them are now 16

years old The students learned English as a forcign language for four years at Junior Lligh School and are all learning Uinglish with three official Linglish classes and an extra optional class every weck

‘There are nine teachers of English at the school, One of them got a MA Degree They are at different ages, however, they all are enthusiastic, responsible and hard-

working teachers

Students of Binh Minh high school mostly come from working, class families, who are not very well aware of the importance of English to their future Although they all have learnt English for a quite long time, their English level especially in listening and speaking is still not very high

In English lessons, the main teaching aids used are simply a blackboard, textbooks and in recantt three years teachers have been using cassclics in listening lessons The classrooms are physically overcrowded, with lunited space for activity organization

Besides, there are no competitions and outdoor activities for students to take part in

Morcover, most of the students do nol sce the importance of English They just focus on learning, the subjects for their university entrance exam, namely matlis,

chemistry and physics English tests are administered to measure students’ language

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ability However, students’ speaking cxam is not implemented Generally, the students’ knowledge of Linglish is poor, Also their exposure to Unglish in and oulside he classroom is limited, so they are not good al communivative skills

‘Therefore, the teaching of Hnglish in general, and the teaching speaking English in

particular has encountered a lot of difficulties

2.1.2 The textbook

‘The 11 form students are now usmg Tieng Anh 11, the standard syllabus, written

ty Hoang Van Van et al It follows two popular approaches, namely Jeamer-centred

approach and commumicalive approach There are 16 units in the textbook Each

‘mit contains 5 lessons: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writmng and Language locus

Obviously, these textbooks focus on linguistic knowledge as well as skill formation

and development Speaking slall is taught in one lesson of a unit Tis primary goal is

to improve communicative competence, that is, the ability to communicate in

English

2.13 The partipants

‘The participants in the research were 4 teachers of English teaching the 11" grade

students Besides, 10 classes of grade 11 with 370 students af Binh Minh High

School, where the researcher teaches English, were selected, The teachers and

students helped to carry out their classes as usual for the researcher to observe and collect Ihe data

The Teachers

The 4 teachers of English who are currently teaching the 11" grade were observed

and interviewed in this study They all have a formal college degree in English

teaching profession Among, them, there are 3 females and one male ‘heir ages range from 25 to 13 They have been teaching English at Binh Minh Iligh School

from three lo eighteen years

The Students

370 students in the 11" grade selected at Binh Minh High School are from ten

classes Tn tsrms of their geographical origin, 100% of them come from the

countryside, They are not the same at English proficiency level in general and speaking competence in particular Only a mumority of them are good and active in

speaking classes while the majorily remain passive and quiet

‘The researcher’s choice of doing the research on the 11" grade students is due te the

fact that they are in the second year al their high school, so they are quite familiar

wilh the teaching methodology of the tcachers in this level At the same time, they

do still not feel the pressure of the National Secondary School Examination as most

of the 12" prade students do

2.2 Data Collection Instruments

‘The purpose of this study fits well with Lrown’s (2001) definition of survey research, which “gather[s] data on the characteristics and views of informants about

the nature of language and language learing Uhrough the use of oral interviews or

written questionnaires” (p 2) Brown goes on to elaborate that “survey research

relies more on common sense and less on complex statistics Often the results

yeporled as percentages and averages are sufficionl lo explain the resulls of a survey

sesearch project” (p 15)

Ta an altewpl to identify the commnon paler of oral corrective feedback the teachers in the rescarched school frequently used, a quantitative methed with a

qualitative element was employed in this study Classroom observation was the

tain instrument used to collect dala about Ihe patlerns of teachers’ corrective

feedback and leamers' uptake in speaking lessons for the study In addition,

informal interviews were conducted with the observed teachers to find out how they reasoned their use of oral corrective feedback techniques The research focuses on

teachers' comective feedback and its impact on students' uptake, a kind of teacher-

student interaction; classroom observation proves to be the most helpful method of

data collection because according to Nunan (1989) there is no substitule for direct

observation as a way of finding out about language classroom Moreover, objectives for this study are particularly suitable for this type of study because cbservational restarch is a systemalic process uscd for examining the ffectiveness of various

teaching methods in diverse classrooms (Waxman, Tharp, & Hilberg, 2004), In addition, according to the definition found in the Mincyclopedia of Liducational

Rescarch, structured observation research methodology focuses ơn oblaining

quantitative descriptions or measurements of the specific human behavior through direct observations (Medley, 1992) This type of research is used to conduct

research im classroom or ober naluralistic setunmgs Medley (1992) slates thal, the

structured observational system pre-determines particular sets of explicit classroom

‘behaviors to be observed and recorded by a trained observer

Unbke qualitative research, in this quantilalive research, the researcher was nol

actively involved in the creation of the data, but merely served as a recorder and data analyst The study methodology was also consistent with the definition of

structured obscrvational research as described by Medley (1992) in Ihe paragraph

above For example, the English speal:ing lessons were recorded and transcribed to

provide a record of the discourse between and among teachers and students This

data provided a picture of the human behavior (hal occurred in the classroom during

the observations For these reasons the observational research strategy is

particularly suited for this stucly

After the classroom observations were all conducted, the four teacher participants

were, in turn, asked to join a personal interview as reinforcement to the previously

collected data This is the supplemental instrument Hach post-cbscrvalion inlerview

was conducted in a teacher room within the school and audiotaped The merviews

were then transcribed into a word processor for examining more about the purpose

of providing feedback, the types and forms of feedback as well as the practice of

error correction teachers often use to give comments on the students’ errors ‘The

interview was formed in semi-structured questions All the interviews were

performed in English and lasted for approximately ten mimutes each.

2.3 Procedures

2.3.1, Procedures of data collection

The researcher observed all the ten 11 classes taught by four difTerent tc

English The data were collected in 16 lessons, four for each teacher Kach lesson

lasts 45 minutes The classes were not prepared for being observed The students

and teachers did as usual Morcover, the researcher did not do anything to micriere

with the teachers, the students and activities, that is non-participating observation The work of data collection for this study was carried out in the beginning of the

second semester and lasted for 2 lwo months from late September, 2015 to late

Jannuary, 2016 ‘Therefore, on the syllabus, the study falls from unit 8 to unit 12 in the English textbook for the 11"" grade, which focus on the themes of celebrations,

the post offive, nalure in danger, sources of onorgy and Ihe Asian Games

Before embarking in observing the classes, the researcher got permission from the

school and the teachers to be observed to avoid ethics violations Also, prior to the

observation, in order to have an overview of the English jangnage knowledge

provided for the students previously, the researcher spent considerable time reading

the textbooks, namely, Tieng Anh 9, Tieng Anh 10

Coming to cach class, the researcher brought along a voice recorder, a pen, and a

notebook When observing the lessons, the researcher did not do anything to

interfere the class All the data needed were carefully noled down Besides, the

Sesearcher used a voice recorder to record all the lessons in case of later reference After observing the lessons, the oral data colected were transcribed

2.3.2 Procedures of data analysis

‘The categories used to code the data in the study were adapted from the error treatment sequence delineated in Lyster and Ranta (1997) model In Lyster and

Ranta’s coding scheme, an error trealment starts with a learner alterance containing

at least one error Note that “errors” in such sequences are what teachers treated as

errors, irrespective of whether the errors actually constituted deviation from target language norms The crroncous utlenmec is followed cilhor by leachers’ correclive

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fecdback or topic continuation If corrective feedback is provided, then it is followed either by learner uptake or topic continuation If there is uptake, then the

leamner’s initial crronvous ullerane

cilher repaired or conLinues to need repair in some way Iu this cent study, the main unit of analysis was the error treatment sequence, which contains teacher and student tums in the following order

« Leamer error

«Teacher feedback

« TLeamer uplake, with either repair of the error or needs- repair

«) The relationship belween teacher fecdback and leaner uptake

This order reflected what usually happened when a teacher responded to an

‘utterance containing an error and when a student attempted to respond to the

teacher's feedback move In other cases, learners’ errors, teacher's feedback, uptake with repair; or uptake with needs- repair might be followed with teacher- initiated or student- mitiated topic continuation All students' utterances with errors were included and counted,

Once the error categories, feedback types, and students’ uptake for each feedback were identified and coded, the data was analyzed and the results were used ta answer Uhree researeh questions of the study afler giving an overview of student and teacher turns corrective feedback and uptake

Summary

This chapter gives a description of methodology to carry ont the study As shown above, this study makes use of classroom observation as the main method and

personal inlerviews as the supplemertal method of data collection because the

rescarcher notices that these tools are the most suitable for the objective of the

study ‘fhe participants of the study are four teachers teaching at ten classes of 11"

grade The characteristics of the participants are fully described in order to help seaders understand the present context, in whieh the present study is camied out Observation tool procedures including data collection and data analysis are also fully presented The data collected are then transcribed and analyzed quantitatively

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by answering the two rescarch questions to find out the pattems of teachers’ corrective feedback and learners’ uptake, and also its relationship, all of which are

shown clearly in the next chapter

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