what is the relationship between teachers’ different corrective feedback types and students uptake and repair

Hence, it would be helpful forteachers to find out students’ preferences and attitudes to corrective feedback so that they can make the right decisions about when to correct, what tocorr

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This initial chapter states the problem and the rationale of the study,together with the aims, objectives, scope, methods and the significance of thewhole paper Above all, it is in this chapter that the research questions are setout to work as the guidelines for the whole research

1.1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study

The requirements of English teaching-learning to meet communicativeneeds in real life have made traditional teaching methods, whose objectivesare the acquisition of grammar and vocabulary, gradually give way tocommunicative language teaching (CLT) approach In the light of CLT,

“learners need to develop the ability to use the language they are learningappropriately in a given social encounter.” (Hymes, 1972) This approach, inrecent years, has been applied in Vietnam

In the past, a perfect lesson would be a lesson without students’ mistakes

“Instead of correcting the student, the teacher would say: “Sit down” in adisciplinary way or walk away from the student who had made a mistake.”(Nguyen, B., Bui, L.C., Truong, V.D., Ho, T.M.H., Nguyen, H., Bao, K et al.,2003) In contrast, in the communicative approach, making errors is anecessary and natural process of language teaching Also, correction is anintegral part of the lesson Therefore, it is important for teachers to givecorrective feedback on students’ errors

Researchers have shown that teachers’ corrective feedback enablesstudents to notice the gap between their interlanguage forms and the targetlanguage forms (Schmidt & Frota, 1986) Additionally, corrective feedbackfrom teachers also leads to the enhancement of learners’ metalinguistic

awareness (Swain, 1995) Besides, it helps increase motivation and builds asupportive classroom climate.

For first-year students, majoring in English, at University of Languageand International Studies (ULIS), who were too familiar with the Grammar-Translation teaching method at secondary schools, speaking skill is considered

to be the most challenging one They encounter many difficulties incommunication process, such as mispronouncing, using words out of context,

or making syntax errors Thus, teachers’ corrective feedback plays anindispensable role in helping freshmen to improve their speaking skills

However, the issue of corrective feedback provision still remains asophisticated one because on the one hand, most students want and expect theteacher to give them corrective feedback on their performance (Harmer,2001) On the other hand, students of high self-esteem are easily demotivated

by teachers’ straightforward error correction Moreover, corrective feedbackmay intervene in the flow of students’ ideas Hence, it would be helpful forteachers to find out students’ preferences and attitudes to corrective feedback

so that they can make the right decisions about when to correct, what tocorrect, or which type of corrective feedback to be used in response toparticular types of error and so on

Although the topic of teachers’ corrective feedback has been widelyresearched by different scholars worldwide and starts to be paid attention to inVietnam, not many studies have been done concerning both the situation ofteachers’ corrective feedback provision and students’ attitudes Also, first-yearstudents (who initially entered university with a big leap from the way theyare used to study in high schools and the more independent way of study theyare expected to follow at universities) seems to receive less consideration inprevious research

All those reasons stimulate the researcher to conduct a study on teachers’corrective feedback to first-year students in English speaking lessons atEnglish Department (ED), ULIS in the hope that it will make a contribution tothe field it is envisioned and fill the gaps in former research.

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study

First of all, the study sets out to explore the current situation of teachers’giving corrective feedback to first-year students at ED, ULIS in Englishspeaking lessons, including when to correct, what to correct, the frequency ofdifferent corrective feedback types used and choice of corrective feedbacktypes in response to different types of error Secondly, the relationshipbetween teachers’ corrective feedback types and students’ uptake and repair isgiven a close look to examine which types lead to the most amount ofstudents’ uptake and repair Additionally, students’ attitudes to the way theteacher gives corrective feedback and preferences for the particular type ofcorrective feedback in accordance with the particular type of error are takeninto consideration, paving the way for several pedagogical implications toenhance the efficacy of teachers’ corrective feedback on students’ errors

In particular, the research paper seeks the answers to the following

research question: What is the relationship between teachers’ different

corrective feedback types and students’ uptake and repair? This question is

broken down into three sub-questions:

1 In what ways do teachers give corrective feedback to first-year students

in English speaking lessons?

2 What are students’ attitudes towards and preferences of teachers’ giving corrective feedback?

3 Which types of corrective feedback lead to most uptake and repair?

1.3 Scope of the study

There are different kinds of teachers’ feedback, such as oral versuswritten feedback, evaluative versus descriptive feedback, or corrective,motivational, and reinforcing feedback However, within the scope of aresearch paper and due to the time limitation, this study just focuses onteachers’ oral corrective feedback in speaking lessons for first-yearmainstream students.

Teachers of the First-year Division and first-year mainstream students at

ED, ULIS are the samples, whose participation would be of great contribution

to the accomplishment of the study

1.4 Methods of the study (phần 1.4, 1.5 và 1.6 em viết thêm so với bản

Proposal)

1.4.1 Data collection methods

This study employed the triangulation method of questionnaires,observation and retrospective interviews to attain the best exploitation of data Specifically, two sets of questionnaires are used for students andteachers

For teachers: Survey questionnaires are employed to investigate the

ways teachers give corrective feedback to their students in speaking lessons,and why they correct errors in those ways This data would shed the light onthe relationship between teachers’ view on error correction and the real types

of correction they use This kind of information would help the researcher getmore ideas for the discussion

For students: Survey questionnaires would be delivered to 5 classes of

first-year students to seek information about students’ perception of andattitudes towards the ways teachers give corrective feedback in speakinglessons

In addition, classroom observation would be used to cross-check thequestionnaire data, since a combination of different sources of data would helpreduce bias 5 classroom observations are conducted in 5 classes of first-yearstudents to seek information about the current situation of teachers’ correctivefeedback and students’ uptake and repair in speaking lessons.

Finally, 10 students among those who have been given teachers’ oralcorrective feedback in 5 observed lessons (2 students from each observedlesson) would take part in the retrospective interview This instrument is used

to find out students’ attitudes when they are given corrective feedback,students’ assessment of the success of teachers’ corrective feedback (whichwill be used for discussion) Retrospective interview also clarifies any unclear

or unobtainable details via classroom observations

1.4.2 Data analysis methods

First, the collected data would be classified to answer the three researchquestions The first and the last questions are expected to be solved byanalyzing the data gathered from survey questionnaires and classroomobservations while the data gathered from students’ survey questionnaires andretrospective interviews would seek the answer to the second question Thesynthesis of all the findings would help draw pedagogical recommendations.After that, for each question, the data would be analyzed in categories,tables in which statistics such as percentage and frequency counts arecalculated The especially important data from interviews are cited whennecessary to illustrate the data analysis

1.5 Significance of the study

The study is conducted to find out the relationship between teachers’corrective feedback types and students’ uptake and repairs Hopefully, itwould make a contribution to the field that it is envisioned As for teachers of

English, the paper would provide them with useful pedagogical suggestionsrelated to error treatments, including who, when and what to correct Also, itwould reveal to them which types of corrective feedback to use according tostudents’ levels in order to lead to the greatest amount of uptake and repair.Regarding researchers, who share the same interest in the topic, they couldrely on this paper to get useful information for their future studies.

1.6 An overview of the rest of the paper

The rest of the paper includes four following chapters:

Chapter 2 (Literature Review) provides the background of the studyincluding definitions of key concepts, objectives of teaching speaking skill forfirst-year students in English Department, HULIS, VNU and discussions ofrelated studies

Chapter 3 (Methodology) describes the selection of participants, datacollection instruments and the procedures employed to conduct the research.Chapter 4 (Results and discussion) presents, analyzes and discusses thefindings the researcher found out according to three research questions

Chapter 5 (Conclusion) summarizes the main issues discussed in thepaper, provides some pedagogical implications and points out the limitations

of the research as well as proposes several suggestions for further studies.Following this chapter are the References and Appendices

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Key concepts

2.1.1 An overview of speaking skill

2.1.1.1 Definition of speaking skill

There have been various ways of defining speaking skill According toChaney (1998, p.13), speaking is “the process of building and sharingmeaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety ofcontexts.” This definition shows that speaking covers both verbal and non-verbal messages In language teaching, Nunan (2003) (as cited in Brown &Nation, 1997) puts it that “speaking is the productive oral skill It consists ofproducing systematic verbal utterance to convey meaning” (as cited in Brown

& Nation, 1997) Whereas Chaney considers speaking as a natural process ofhuman beings, Nunan approaches it as a skill which is the deliberate practicethrough real-life experiences that users have This study, which aims atinvestigating the speaking practice of students in terms of language skills,adopts Nunan’s definition

2.1.1.2 Elements of speaking skill

According to Bygate (1987), speaking requires encoding communicativeintent often in the ‘here and now’ This is because of time-constraint andconditions inherent in listener-speaker situations There is also the need tohandle unpredictability of listener response Hence, spoken languageproficiency involves being able to produce accurately and fluently,autonomous utterances which are appropriate to the context of the speechsituation

Accuracy refers to the use of correct forms where utterances do not

contain errors affecting the phonological, syntactic, semantic or discoursefeatures of a language (Bryne, 1988)

Fluency may be defined as the ability to get across communicative intent

without too much hesitation and too many pauses to cause barriers or abreakdown in communication (Crystal, 1977; Bryne, 1988 & Nation, 1991)

In language teaching and learning, there is no dining that fact that bothaccuracy and fluency are essential in language learning Depended on theclassroom objectives and tasks, there may be more focus on accuracy thanfluency or vice versa

“mistake” or performance error (Corder, 1967) (as cited in Burt, 1975) In thisway, errors arise because the correct form or use of a target item is not part of

a speaker’s competence, whereas mistakes arise (for reasons of fatigue, stress,inattention) even though the correct form or use is part of the user’scompetence

Another distinction between mistakes and errors, based on Snow (1977),depends on whether learners know they do something wrong and can fix it ornot From his viewpoint, errors occur when learners produce something wrong

without knowing it or even they might know about it, they can not make itright.

In this study, an error is defined according to Snow (1977) Likelanguage errors, speaking errors occur when speakers do not know about them

or can not repair even being aware of errors In short, as a kind of spokenlanguage, errors can be simply understood as “faults made by speakers duringthe production of sounds, words and sentences.” (Richard and Platt, 1992)

2.1.2.2 Causes of errors

Many reasons why learners make errors have been pointed out bylinguistic scholars as well as language experts worldwide Within this study,four most typical causes of errors are mentioned

 Inter-lingual interference

There always exist some similarities between the mother tongue and thetarget language For the similar part, the learner may transfer concepts fromthe mother tongue into the target language (Wang, 2000) But there also existssome diversities between them, so when the learners feel he could express inthe equivalent way, he falls into pitfalls

For example: Our class has twenty boys and ten girls

Such sentences appear frequently owing to the influence of Vietnameseword order, which in English should be: There are twenty boys and ten girls inour class

 Intra-lingual interference

Intra-lingual interference comes from the target language itself (Wang,2000) When a learner has already known some grammar rules about thatlanguage, some knowledge learned earlier will have certain effects on hisfurther study

For example: He buyed a picture

Here, the speaker has already understood the past tense and verbalinflection in English, but he follows the general way to add “ed” to the verb

“buy”

 Undevelopmental readiness

According to Ellis (1994) (as cited in Burt, 1975), there are differentstages in the process a foreign language perceives the language Thus, whenone is forced to produce an utterance that they are not yet developmentallyready for, they are likely to make errors

 Fossilization

The term “fossilization” is used when describing “the process by whichnon-target forms become fixed in interlanguage.”(Ellis, 1994, as cited in Burt,1975) More specifically, even after extended exposure to or instruction in thetarget language, errors seem to be permanent in the learner’s second language.(Elson, 2004) The fossilization may be due to the lack of corrective feedbackwhen there should have been some The willingness of the teacher to let errors

go uncorrected may cause the persistence, an eventually, fossilization of sucherrors

the listener to misinterpret the speaker’s message, while local errors - thosethat are limited to a single part of the sentence - rarely affect thecommunication of a verbal message.

Concerning linguistics, Suzuki (2006) analyzed three types of errors:grammatical errors, lexical errors, and phonological errors

 Grammatical errors were non-target like use of determiners,

prepositions, pronouns, number agreement, tense, verb morphology, andauxiliaries Additionally, errors in pluralization, negation, question formation,and word order were considered as grammatical errors

 Lexical errors included inaccurate use of nouns, verbs, adverbs,and adjectives, in the sense of open classes, or word groups whosemembership is in principle indefinite or unlimited (Crystal, 1991) Forexample, an error such as “one people” was considered a grammatical errorwhere the noun “people” was a misuse of the noun person, because this errorresulted from number agreement between an adjective and a noun Thenumber agreement error was in the grammatical category rather than in thelexical category However, an error such as “her mother gave birth to onepeople” was counted as a lexical error, since the error is not aboutgrammatical number agreement of one to people but rather aboutinappropriate lexical choice of people for baby/boy/girl

 Phonological errors refer to the wrong ways of pronouncing a

single word, of using word stress, sentence intonation and other phonologicalmatters such as linking, elision, and assimilation that often led to difficulty ofcomprehension of the target words In case that mispronounced words werecomprehensible to the teacher, the words were still considered to havephonological errors when the words were given corrective feedback

For Edge (1989), based on the functions and significance incommunication, errors are categorized into “errors of meaning” and “error ofform” In his view, the former is more important because it leads to amisunderstanding and affects meaning and communication Specifically, the

“errors of meaning” are ones that occur:

 When a speaker uses a correct piece of language (linguistic form)that doesn’t mean what the speaker wanted to mean;

 When the speaker uses a correct linguistic form which is sociallyunacceptable – the big problem here being one of politeness (p.4)

Whereas the errors of meaning are likely to occur in fluency stage, theerrors of form often emerge in accuracy one

In the context of language teaching and learning of this study, theresearcher adopts the two theories of classification of errors by both Edge(1989) and Suzuki (2006) as the guideline for further development

Figure 1: Classification of errors

2.1.3 Teachers’ corrective feedback

2.1.3.1 Definition

The feedback as described by Schachter (1983) (as cited in Idjraoui,2004) is a “nutritional need” for the language learners and is thus seen as an

Classification of errors

Errors of meaning Errors of form

Grammatical

errors Lexical errors

Phonological errors

important element in any second language as well as foreign language

acquisition class Corrective feedback can be explained by the term “negative

evidence”, which Gass (2003) roughly defines as implicit or explicit

information afforded learners regarding their erroneous utterances Theinformation provided, in other words, is either directly or indirectly statingthat something is wrong with the learner’s utterance

This study adopts Chaudron’s (1977) (as cited in Zhao, 1994) definition:

“corrective feedback refers to any reaction of the teacher which clearlytransforms, disapprovingly refers to, or demands improvement of the learnerutterance.”

For most learners, the use of corrective feedback may constitute the mostpotent source of improvement in target language development (Chaudron,1988) (as cited in Zhao, 1994) For them, learning in the classroom with nocorrective feedback resembles talking to a mute listener in a naturalconversation, or receiving no prescription after describing her symptoms to adoctor

2.1.3.2 Types of corrective feedback

Following Lyster and Ranta (1997) instances of corrective feedback inthe data were categorized according to the following six types: explicitcorrection, recast, clarification request, metalinguistic, elicit and repetition.Their definition for each of these types is quoted first, together with anexample of each type

2.1.3.2.1 Explicit correction

Explicit correction refers to the explicit provision of the correct form Asthe teacher provides the correct form, he or she clearly indicates that what thestudent had said was incorrect (e.g “Oh you mean…,” “You should say…”)

Student (S) [Error-lexical] “Procedure: We cut the straws into six different

thicknesses and attach the straws with tape.”

Teacher (T) [Feedback-explicit] “Uh, David, excuse me I want you to use the word ‘length.’ You cut the straws into different lengths Not thicknesses.”

2.1.3.2.2 Recast

Recast involves the teacher’s reformulation of all or part of a student’sutterance, minus the error Recast is generally implicit in that they are notintroduced by phrases such as “You mean…,” “Use this word,” “You shouldsay…,” etc However, some recasts are more salient than others in that theymay focus on one word only, whereas others incorporate the grammatical orlexical modification into a sustained piece of discourse

T Now um anything else?

S [Error - grammatical] Goosebump?

T [Feedback – recast] Goosebumps? Okay, get goosebumps (Writes on

board) Good word! Goosebumps What are goosebumps? Little…

a repetition of the error as in “What do you mean by X?”

T There is only one thing I have a phobia about…and I might tell you later, you might think it’s very stupid, but I can actually get quite sick…do you want

me to tell you?

S Yeah Yeah

T Okay, guess! Come on fifty dollars! (laughter) Just guess what I’m

S [Error – lexical] Any key words?

T [Clarification request] Sorry?

S Give us key words?

T Give you a clue?

T Could you tell me how long I must sit in the waiting room? I wonder how long I’ll…

S1 [Error – lexical] Be able to wait for you

T [Feedback – metalinguistic] No no not be able to Be able means

S2 [Can

T [Feedback – metalinguistic] To have the ability to but we’re not asking

that We’re asking…

S1 Just how long

S2 Just how long we’re waiting

2.1.3.2.5 Elicitation

Elicitation refers to at least three techniques that teachers use to directly

elicit the correct form from the student First, teachers elicit completion of

their own utterance by strategically pausing to allow students to “fill in theblank” as it were (e.g., “There’s ”) Such “elicit completion” moves may bepreceded by some metalinguistic comment such as “No, not that It’s a ” or

by a repetition of the error as in the following example:

S [Error - lexical] .Well, there’s a stream of perfume that doesn’t smell

very nice

T [Elicitation] So a stream of perfume, we’ll call that a ?

Second, teachers use questions to elicit correct forms (e.g., How do we

say X in English?”) Such questions exclude the use of yes/no questions: Aquestion such as “Do we say that in English?” is metalinguistic feedback, not

elicitation Third, teachers occasionally ask students to reformulate their

utterance

2.1.3.2.6 Repetition

Repetition refers to the teacher’s repetition, in isolation, of the student’serroneous utterance In most cases, teachers adjust their intonation so as tohighlight the error

T (to individual pair of Ss) Okay, how does that picture make you feel?

S1 Small spider on your hand

T Uh huh, on your hand… how does it make you feel?

S1 Scared

S2 [Error – lexical] Terrible

T [Feedback – repetition with rising intonation] Terrible?

2.1.3.3 Principles of giving corrective feedback in speaking lessons

Research by Bartram and Walton (1991) showed that it is anoversimplification to say that there is any consensus in the TEFL/TESL fieldabout error correction In behaviourist accounts of second language

acquisition (SLA), errors were considered undesirable According to Ellis(1985) mentioned in one of her book, errors, according to behaviorist theory,were the result of non-learning rather than wrong learning But in either case,there was almost total agreement that errors should be avoided

Later, however, as a result of inter-language theory, errors were nolonger seen as “unwanted form” (George, 1972) but as natural outcome of thedevelopment of communication skills, a necessary part of the learning process

In dealing with errors, there are a number of questions which have been

on the way of finding and discussing by researchers and teachers all aroundthe word through time:

1 When should learners’ errors be corrected?

2 Which errors should be corrected?

3 Who should do the correcting?

(Hendrickson, 1978)

2.1.3.3.1 When to correct

There is no absolute “rule” about when tot or not correct students’ errors.Many students still prefer immediate correction by the teacher, following theAudio-Lingual style On the other hand, Harmer (2005) argued that “the besttime to correct is as late as possible.” Nevertheless, when deciding the time tocorrect students’ oral errors, it is necessary to consider first of all, the nature ofthe activity being undertaken Accordingly there are two ways of deliveringcorrective feedback: on the spot or immediate correction and delayedcorrection

 On the spot/immediate correction

The most typical way of correcting is by interrupting the student before

he has finished speaking This could have a positive effect “when students areinvolved in the practice stage, where accurate use of language is strongly

insisted from students.” (Kelly, 2006) For example, if students are beingdrilled in order to practise pronunciation of a word or phrase, then they should

be stopped immediately when they make a mistake, otherwise they willcontinue repeating defective language, which is pointless

 Delayed correction

From the viewpoint of Ur (1991), in production stage, unlike practiceone, immediate correction would disturb and discourage mote than help It isbecause it may make anxious students loose the track, forget what they aretalking about and their anxiety levels increase Therefore, with respect tofluency activities, the usual advice is to delay feedback until the end of theactivity so as to avoid interrupting the student’s flow of speech (Moss, 2000).For instance, teacher take notes on common errors that students commit.During the follow-up correction session the teacher then presents commonmistakes made so that all can benefit from an analysis of which mistakes weremade and why

2.1.3.3.2 What to correct

The theory on language acquisition and teaching methodology supported

by those teachers who emphasize communicative competence states that notall errors should be corrected “Which errors will be corrected is usuallydecided by the objectives of the lesson, or the specific exercise that is beingdone at that moment.” (Beare, 2000) In other words, if students are focusing

on simple past irregular forms, then only mistakes in those forms are corrected(i.e., goed, thinked, etc.) Other mistakes, such as mistakes in a future form, ormistakes of collocations (for example: I made my homework) are ignored.Moreover, according to Moss (2000) teachers should treat those errorswhich are regularly repeated by one or more students and also they shouldattend to those they consider to be the most serious For supporters of the

Communicative Approach who give emphasis to the importance of fluencyover accuracy, this tends to be those errors that hinder communication of thespeaker's message Arguably, however, this has lead to an increase in thenumber of students who though capable of communicating freely, continue tomake a significant number of grammatical errors, sometimes even at higherlevels Interestingly, if students were asked about this situation, they wouldprobably claim that their aim was to learn to speak accurately and fluently atthe same time

Another consideration when deciding what to correct is the nature oferrors and how ready or capable students are of dealing with particular ones

In the case of slips of the tongue, for example, it would seem wisest tooverlook them, unless they are frequent, or result from carelessness Withregard to errors resulting from faulty or insufficient knowledge of thelanguage, however, the situation is more complicated and if students have notbeen exposed to a language form or are not ready to learn a particularstructure, then it could be argued that there is little point in intervening andgiving feedback Having said this, supposedly more complex language can becontextualised and given to the students in the form of chunks, for exampleencouraging them to say “I've finished” and not “I am finished”, which is notlikely to be too demanding, even for beginners

2.1.3.3.3 Who to correct

Concerning the question “who should correct students’ errors?”, Gower(1995) pointed out three options: self correction, peer correction and teachercorrection

 Self correction

Martinez (2007) stated that “A very useful, practical and effective way ofcorrection is the use of an inductive method in which the teacher asks the

student to correct himself (self-correction) and realize on what he did wrong.”This way is easier to remember “because someone has put something right inhis or her own head.” (Edge, 1989)

Moreover, according to Kavaliauskienė (2003), state-of-the-art viewpoint

of learner-centeredness and developing learner autonomy suggests that insome settings learner’s self-correction of errors (with the teacher’s help) might

be more beneficial for language learning than teacher’s correction A discovery approach reduces the likelihood of students becoming dependent onexternal assistance (Moss, 2000) However, learner independence is notsomething that can be achieved overnight and initially students will requirethe support of someone with more knowledge than themselves, in order tobecome aware of, and/or correct their errors Gradually, teacher interventionshould be reduced and students should be encouraged to pick up on eachothers' mistakes and provide feedback

self- Peer correction

In case the student fails to do self correction, the teacher can invite otherstudents to help out (Bartram & Walton, 1991) According to Edge (1989),there are four advantages of peer correction:

 Firstly, when a learner makes a mistake and another learner corrects

it, both learners are involved in listening to and thinking about thelanguage

 Secondly, when a teacher encourages learners to correct eachother’s mistakes, the teacher gets a lot of important information aboutthe students’ ability Can they hear a particular error? Can they correctit?

 Thirdly, the students become used to the idea that they can learnfrom each other So, peer correction helps learners cooperate and helpsmake them less dependent on teachers

 Fourthly, if students get used to the idea of peer correction withouthurting each other’s feelings, they will be able to help each other learnwhen they work in pairs and groups, when the teacher can’t hear what

is said (p.26)

 Teacher correction

If neither the student who made the error, nor any other students cancorrect it, then the teacher has to give more help Calve (1992) advocated thatmore teachers’ direct and overt error correction would avoid misleadinglearners into believing that linguistic errors are acceptable

2.1.4 Students’ responses to teachers’ corrective feedback

2.1.4.1 Uptake

When learners are presented with corrective feedback, they have a widerange of responses at their disposal, what has been called uptake This termhas been used in SLA literature with two different meaning One first meaning

is the one used by Allwright (1984) in which uptake refers to what learners areable to report learning during or at the end of the lesson Some studies ofuptake carried out under this first sense are, for example, Slimani’s (1992) andAlcon’s (1994) A second meaning of uptake is offered by Lyster and Ranter(1997):

Uptake […] refers to a student’s utterance that immediately followsthe teacher’s feedback and that constitutes a reaction in some way to theteacher’s intention to draw attention to some aspect of the student’s initialutterance (this over all intention is clear to the student although the teacher’sspecific linguistic focus may not be)

In the present study, this second meaning of uptake is the one theresearcher adopts, since she pays attention to the students’ reaction whenfeedback is provided by the teacher in the foreign language classroom