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 ***************** PHẠM THỊ HỒNG AN EXPLORATORY RESEARCH ON TEA

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

FACULTY OF POST–GRADUATE STUDIES

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PHẠM THỊ HỒNG

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

IN NINH BINH (NGHIÊN CỨU THĂM DÒ VỀ VIỆC CHỮA LỖI NÓI CỦA GIÁO VIÊN

VÀ SỰ TIẾP NHẬN CỦA HỌC SINH TRONG GIỜ NÓI TIẾNG ANH TẠI

TRƯỜNG THPT BÌNH MINH, TỈNH NINH BÌNH)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Hanoi - 2016

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

FACULTY OF POST–GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

PHẠM THỊ HỒNG

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

IN NINH BINH (NGHIÊN CỨU THĂM DÒ VỀ VIỆC CHỮA LỖI NÓI CỦA GIÁO VIÊN

VÀ SỰ TIẾP NHẬN CỦA HỌC SINH TRONG GIỜ NÓI TIẾNG ANH TẠI

TRƯỜNG THPT BÌNH MINH, TỈNH NINH BÌNH)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Hanoi - 2016

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DECLARATION

I, Pham Thi Hong, the candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (TEFL) certify that this graduation thesis is entirely my own work I 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 The material in this paper has not been submitted for assessment in any other formal courses of study

Hanoi, 2016

Phạm Thị Hồng

Ocean thanks go to my colleagues, who are teachers of English at Binh Minh high school as well as 11th grade 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 the study They are so supportive to my work, without which this paper could not have been fulfilled

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ABSTRACT

In consideration of the importance of oral corrective feedback in teaching 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, I have observed and recorded a number 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 indicate that all teachers use multiple feedback quite frequently to help their students to take repair or successful uptake Last but not least, the uptake pattern is also various Recast seem to be most frequently used but with least uptake whereas elicitation, explicitation and multiple feedback seem to be the most successful in resulting in uptake

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION………

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………

ABSTRACT………

TABLE OF CONTENTS………

PART A INTRODUCTION I Rationale ……… ……… ………

II Aims of the study………

III Research questions………

IV Methods of the study ………

V Scope of the study ………

VI Significances of the study………

VII Structure of the study………

PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Error defined……… ………

1.2 Teachers‟ feedback……… …

1.2.1 Definition of teachers‟ feedback………

1.2.2 Types of teachers‟ feedback

1.3 Oral corrective feedback and uptake

1.3.1 Definition of oral corrective feedback

1.3.2 Techniques used in oral corrective feedback

1.3.3 Learners‟ uptake………

1.3.4 .Studies on teacher‟s corrective Feedback and learner‟s uptake in Second Language Acquisition

1.4 Summary……… ………

CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

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2.1 The context of the study………

2.1.1 The research site………

2.1.2 The textbook… ………… ………

2.1.3 The participants ……….………

2.2 Data collection instruments………

2.3 Procedures………

2.3.1 Procedures of data collection………

2.3.2 Procedures of data analysis………

Summary………

CHAPTER 3 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 3.1 Findings………

3.1.1 Patterns of teachers‟ oral corrective feedback ………

3.1.2.Students‟uptake……… …………

3.2 Discussion……… ………

PART C CONCLUSION 1 Summary of the main findings………

2 Pedagogical implications………

3 Limitations of the study………

4 Suggestions for further studies………

REFERENCES………

APPENDIXS Appendix 1………

Appendix 2………

Appendix 3……… ………

Appendix 4………

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Over a long period, considerable attention has been paid to errors and error correction in speaking classes (Ellis, 1994) Different authors have different views Some consider an error as something natural They claim that people cannot avoid making errors and even can learn from them Making errors is a part 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 teachers have always adopted a repressive attitude towards it They usually hold most authority to correct learners‟ errors automatically, regarding the fact that learners value and expect teachers‟ correction

To most language teachers, correcting learners‟ oral errors is one of the most frustrating tasks because it has more potential for subjectivity due to individual variables (Cohen, 1998) In considering the individual variables as influential parts

in speaking, error correction is highly challenging and possibly perplexing Therefore, error correction should be done appropriately; lest, it will discourage learners from learning 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 errors, whether to correct oral error or not and the techniques to correct errors However, there is little research dealing with appropriate error-correction strategies

in general and in speaking classes in particular

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The above situation of error correction in speaking classes and the gap of knowledge in the research area have aroused my interest and encouraged me to

carry out the study entitled: “An exploratory research on teachers‟ 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 class families Despite the fact that English is a compulsory subject and one of the required examinations the students have to pass in order to be qualified for the General Education Diploma, and the fact that English is going to be the language of instruction used at natural science classes according to “The Project of Foreign 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 English in this school is still not 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 consoliation every week Teachers are the only ones who takes the responsibility of teaching the subject at school There is no foreign teacher here

II Aims of the Study

The major aim of the research is to find out error-correction 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 error correction

+ to find out the oral corrective techniques that teachers frequently used in the context of a high svhool

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

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

in leading to students‟ uptake

+ to offer some recommendations on giving oral corrective feedback in speaking lessons

III Research Questions

To achieve the aims of the study, the following three research questions are addressed:

1 What are the common oral corrective feedback techniques teachers use in English speaking lessons for the 11th 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 teachers use lead to

students‟ most uptake?

IV Methods of the Study

As an exploratory study, this study used the quantitative method as the main means

of studying Besides, with a view to analysing the information from the post observation personal interviews, the qualitative method is also employed Firstly, the researcher reviews the related documents, which 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 obtained from 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

face-V Scope of the Study

Language generated by learners in either speech or writing is considered productive Errors occur in either speaking or writing lessons 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 each type of oral corrective feedback

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As the intended scope of the study, data for this research were collected from the observation of English speaking lessons taught to the 11th grade students at Binh Minh high school in Ninh Binh, and the personal interviews after the observation

VI Significance of the Study

Learners‟ errors are significant to both EFL teaching and learning, for errors are evidence of their learning development This thesis, therefore, will contribute a new implication to second language acquisition (SLA), particularly, to the area of error correction in speaking classes Pedagogically, information obtained from this study might help teachers of English get insights into oral errors and oral error correction From this they adjust their teaching and apply appropriate error-correction strategies

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

VII Structure of the Study

The study consists of three main parts:

Part A: Introduction

This part consists of the rationale, aims, scope, research questions, research methods, significance and structure of the study

Part B: Development,

This part is organized into three chapters:

Chapter 1: Literature Review

This chapter deals with various concepts relevant to the research topic such as 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

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Chapter 2: Research Methodology

This chapter presents the situation of teaching and learning English, the facts of error correction in the 11th form speaking lessons at 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: Conclusion

This part consists of the summary of the research, recommendations, limitations and suggestions for further study

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PART B DEVEOPMENT CHAPTER I: 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 its inappropriate use or its 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 unacceptable, she will consider it as an error and will correct it

1.2 Teacher’s feedback

1.2 1 Definition of teacher’s feedback

In 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 learners about their work in progress More specifically, this form of interaction shows learners their errors and guides them to correct their work (Ur, 1996; Lewis, 2002) An important point that needs consideration concerns the purpose of providing feedbacks, according to Lewis (2002), “A good feedback is given without personal judgment or opinion, given based on the facts, always neutral and objective, constructive and focus on the future” (p.7) However, I am not in agreement with 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 responsibility, 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” (Nivre & 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, it can

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be concluded that feedback is beneficial to be provided for students to improve their performance from what they have learnt

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 students for doing a good job, helping them develop 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 corrective 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 mistake

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 to teachers‟ comments delivered on the spot 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 stage 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 straight away The advantages 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 message was understood However, immediate feedback has also a weakness that is miscommunication Sometimes what the students hear is not what is meant The simplest words, for example, have a different connotation for the students 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 being judged Another type of feedback is delayed feedback which is not in the

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fluency 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) (cited 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 from delayed feedback is that whereas the former one tends to be used for individuals‟ performance, the later 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 after 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 teacher‟s 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

1.3.1 Definition of oral corrective feedback

Although the provision of oral corrective feedback in the foreign language classroom seems natural in the process of learning a language, the role that 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 been an area of research and discussion in language acquisition and learning over the last decades

For the sake of clarity, one of the first definitions of oral corrective feedback is that of Chadron (1977) who considers it as “any reaction of the teacher which clearly transforms, disapprovingly refers to, or demands improvement of the learner utterance” (P:31) Other synonyms of corrective feedback more commonly used are

“error correction”, “negative evidence”, negative feedback” However, Han (2008)

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suggests that error correction implies an evident and direct correction, whereas corrective feedback is a more general way of providing some clues, or eliciting some correction, besides the direct correction made by the teacher Ellis Lowe and Erlan (2006) describe corrective feedback as follows:

Corrective feedback takes the form of responses to learner utterances that contain error The responses can consist of (a) an indication that an error has 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 the error

1.3.2 Techniques used in oral corrective feedback

Among many suggested techniques, this research adapted the classification of Lyster and Randa (1997) which suggests six techniques in oral corrective feedback, ordered according to the degree of explicitness, namely recast, clarification request, repetition, elicitation, metalinguistic feedback and explicit correction

Recast

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

of a student‟s utterance, minus the error” (p.46) Spanda and Frohlich (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 include translations in response to a student‟s use of the L1 (Lyster and Randa, 1997)

Clarification request

According to Spanda and Frohlich (1995 cited in Lyster 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 that a repetition or a reformulation is required This is a feedback type that

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can refer 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

attention to it For example: Student: “My father enjoys watch football matches on

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

Elicitation

The teacher directly elicits the correct form from the student by asking questions (e.g “How do you say that in English?”), by pausing to allow the student to complete the teacher‟s utterance, or by asking the student to reformulate his or her utterance (e.g “Please say that again”)

Metalinguistic feedback

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

well-formedness of the student‟s utterance, without explicitly providing the correct form Metalinguistic information generally provides either some grammatical metalanguage that refers to the nature of the error (e.g., “It‟s 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 feminine?”) (Lyster and Randa, 1997)

Explicit correction:

By explicit correction, the teacher clearly indicate that the student‟s form or the utterance is incorrect and then he/she provides the correctecd one (Lyster and Randa, 1997)

1.3 3 Learners’ uptake

Uptake is a construct that is closely related to provision of corrective feedback Slimani (1992) defines uptake as “what learners claim to have learned from a particular lesson”

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While drawing on learners‟ reaction , in studies of corrective feedback, uptake is defined as “a student‟s utterance that immediately follows the teacher‟s feedback and that constitutes a reaction in some way to the teacher‟s intention to draw attention to some aspects of the students‟ initial utterance”, (Lyster & Ranta, 1997;

p 49) Uptake, in this sense, is used as a way of evaluating the effectiveness of feedback types 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 repair and other-initiated repair Other – initiate repair is usually prompted by provision of some sort of feedback to the learner The feedback can be provided by either a teacher or other students (peer – feedback) in response to an error

In a nutshell, uptake, in general, is a very important part of the language acquisition process and Loewen (2004) noted many researchers are interested in examing uptake and linking it to the language learning process

1.3.4 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 understand the researches 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 corrective feedback ranging from implicit to explicit ones and came to the argument on the uselessness of implicit techniques when learners 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 of different types of negative feedback

on the acquisition of English dative alternation by 100 adult Spanish-speaking ELL learners They found that groups receiving negative feedback performed significantly better than the control group, which received no feedback They also

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found that groups that received explicit rule explanation performed significantly better compared to other groups One possible explanation that the authors provided was that adult language learners require more explicit explanation because of their previous learning preferences Their study suggests that feedback is an important part of the language learning process However, it appears that there is still not definite agreement on whether the age of learners or type of input impacts the 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 to 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 Lyster 1998a: 189) Obviously, most teachers like to use recast (55 %) In term of leading to learner uptake, these two authors found that recast, although used extensively in the studied classrooms, was least likely to lead to successful student uptake They claimed that other types of corrective feedback resulted in more negotiation of form between a teacher and the learner and therefore resulted in more cases of student initiated successful uptake

turns

In a follow up study, Lyster (1998b) focused more on recast because this corrective strategy was used almost extensively by the language immersion programs Lyster used the same database of classroom observations 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 students with corrective feedback regarding their output The author compared teacher use of recast with various types of non-corrective repetition and positive feedback as approval moves Lyster suggested that the effectiveness of recast can be further reduced by the signs of approval, such as good job, great, well done, etc that teachers might use along with this corrective technique He also proposed that the possible reason for recasst to be used

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

to provide learners with feedback on their performance without interrupting the course of the classroom interaction However, he admitted that recasts do not give much negotiation of form 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 correct utterance 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 learners to notice their corrective intent, especially in 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 learners‟ attention to form, and

so, they do not capture the corrective nature of reformulation Recently, 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 learners respond to it Unlike the aforementioned studies, Ellis et al (2001) examined the issue of feedback provision in relationship to learner 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 episodes , 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, unlike others, suggested that teachers should not avoid recast as a corrective feedback technique Lyster (2002) also came

to the conclusion that student-generated repair following teachers‟ provision of elicitation involves a different level of processing than teachers‟ recast

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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 might mistake them for non-corrective repetitions

Ammar and Spada (2006), and Lyster & Mori (2006) investigated the effects of recasts and prompts on learners‟ oral ability across different proficiency levels and found that prompts were more effective than recasts and that the effectiveness of recasts was sensitive to learnes‟ proficiency level In particular, high-proficiency learners benefited equally from prompts and recasts, whereas low-proficiency learners benefited significantly more from prompts than recasts In a more recent study, Lyster & Izquierdo (2009) probed the impact of recast and prompts on the acquisition of grammatical gender among French learners and claimed that both types of feedback are effective Learners of recasts benefited from repeated exposure to positive exemplars as well as from opportunities to infer negative evidence, whereas, learners receiving prompts or clarification requests benefited from repeated exposure to negative evidence as well as from opportunities to produce modified output

Both immediate and delayed effects of two other types of interaction feedback, i.e recasts vs elicitations were also examined by Nassaji (2009) which signified that in both corrective feedback types, the more explicit form was more effective than its implicit form Therefore, the degree of explicit was reported to be very crucial in the effectiveness of these two types of corrective feedback

Galina Kavaliauskiene (2012), discovered in 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 significantly – specialization is not very relevant He also believed that 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 not make those same mistakes in the future

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In short, teacher‟s corrective feedback and student‟s uptake was initially a fertile area of research in language teaching studies A large number of studies have been done in an attempt to examine the relationship 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 SUMMARY

This chapter presents a brief understanding of language errors, feedback, teacher‟s corrective feedback and learner‟s uptake It also presents the discussion of teacher‟s corrective feedback and student‟s uptake in previous studies As being mentioned before, corrective is a very important part of learning and instructional process, it provides the learner with essential information on his/her performance 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 area 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 its effectiveness in terms of student learning

From the light of the aforementioned knowledge, this study aims at examining the pattern of teacher‟s oral corrective feedback and learner‟s uptake in an 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

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CHAPTER II: 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 sea of Kim Son district, 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 Each grade has 10 classes On the average, there are about 35 to 40 students in a class Most of the students come from the nearby villages

The number of students in the 11th grade are 370 The majority of them are now 16 years old The students learned English as a foreign language for four years at Junior High School and are all learning English with three official English classes and an extra optional class every week

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 recent three years teachers have been using cassettes in listening lessons The classrooms are physically overcrowded, with limited space for activity organization Besides, there are no competitions and outdoor activities for students to take part in Moreover, most of the students do not see the importance of English They just focus on learning the subjects for their university entrance exam, namely maths, chemistry and physics English tests are administered to measure students‟ language

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ability However, students‟ speaking exam is not implemented Generally, the students‟ knowledge of English is poor Also their exposure to English in and outside the classroom is limited, so they are not good at communicative skills Therefore, the teaching of English in general, and the teaching speaking English in particular has encountered a lot of difficulties

2.1.2 The textbook

The 11th form students are now using Tieng Anh 11, the standard syllabus, written

by Hoang Van Van et al It follows two popular approaches, namely learner-centred approach and communicative approach There are 16 units in the textbook Each unit contains 5 lessons: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language Focus Obviously, these textbooks focus on linguistic knowledge as well as skill formation and development Speaking skill is taught in one lesson of a unit Its primary goal is

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

2.1.3 The partipants

The participants in the research were 4 teachers of English teaching the 11th grade students Besides, 10 classes of grade 11th with 370 students at 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 the data

The Teachers

The 4 teachers of English who are currently teaching the 11th 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 Their ages range from 25 to 43 They have been teaching English at Binh Minh High School from three to eighteen years

The Students

370 students in the 11th grade selected at Binh Minh High School are from ten classes In terms of their geographical origin, 100% of them come from the

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countryside They are not the same at English proficiency level in general and speaking competence in particular Only a minority of them are good and active in speaking classes while the majority remain passive and quiet

The researcher‟s choice of doing the research on the 11th grade students is due to the fact that they are in the second year at their high school, so they are quite familiar with the teaching methodology of the teachers in this level At the same time, they

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

of the 12th grade students do

2.2 Data Collection Instruments

The purpose of this study fits well with Brown‟s (2001) definition of survey research, which “gather[s] data on the characteristics and views of informants about the nature of language and language learning through 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 reported as percentages and averages are sufficient to explain the results of a survey research project” (p 15)

In an attempt to identify the common pattern of oral corrective feedback the teachers in the researched school frequently used, a quantitative method with a qualitative element was employed in this study Classroom observation was the main instrument used to collect data about the patterns of teachers' corrective feedback and learners' 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' corrective 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 substitute 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 observational research is a systematic process used for examining the effectiveness of various

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teaching methods in diverse classrooms (Waxman, Tharp, & Hilberg, 2004) In addition, according to the definition found in the Encyclopedia of Educational Research, structured observation research methodology focuses on obtaining quantitative descriptions or measurements of the specific human behavior through direct observations (Medley, 1992) This type of research is used to conduct research in classroom or other naturalistic settings Medley (1992) states that the structured observational system pre-determines particular sets of explicit classroom behaviors to be observed and recorded by a trained observer

Unlike qualitative research, in this quantitative research, the researcher was not 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 observational research as described by Medley (1992) in the paragraph above For example, the English speaking 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 that occurred in the classroom during the observations For these reasons the observational research strategy is particularly suited for this study

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 Each post-observation interview was conducted in a teacher room within the school and audio-taped The inerviews 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 minutes each

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2.3 Procedures

2.3.1 Procedures of data collection

The researcher observed all the ten 11th classes, taught by four different teachers of English The data were collected in 16 lessons, four for each teacher Each lesson lasts 45 minutes The classes were not prepared for being observed The students and teachers did as usual Moreover, the researcher did not do anything to interfere 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 two 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 11th grade, which focus on the themes of celebrations, the post office, nature in danger, sources of energy and the 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 language knowledge provided for the students previously, the researcher spent considerable time reading the textbooks, namely, Tieng Anh 9, Tieng Anh 10

Coming to each 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 noted down Besides, the researcher 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 treatment starts with a learner utterance 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 erroneous utterance is followed either by teachers‟ corrective

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feedback 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 learner‟s initial erroneous utterance is either repaired or continues to need repair in some way In this current study, the main unit of analysis was the error treatment sequence, which contains teacher and student turns in the following order:

 Learner error

 Teacher feedback

 Learner uptake, with either repair of the error or needs- repair

 The relationship between teacher feedback and learner 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- initiated 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 to answer three research questions of the study after giving an overview of student and teacher turns corrective feedback and uptake

Summary

This chapter gives a description of methodology to carry out the study As shown above, this study makes use of classroom observation as the main method and personal interviews as the supplemental method of data collection because the researcher notices that these tools are the most suitable for the objective of the study The participants of the study are four teachers teaching at ten classes of 11thgrade The characteristics of the participants are fully described in order to help readers understand the present context, in which the present study is carried 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 research questions to find out the patterns of teachers‟ corrective feedback and learners‟ uptake, and also its relationship, all of which are shown clearly in the next chapter