Corrective Feedback
Corrective feedback (CF) refers to responses to a learner's non-targetlike L2 production. It is a form of form-focused instruction — specifically, it falls under Type 3 (incidental focus-on-form) or sometimes Type 2 (planned) in Rod Ellis's taxonomy. Crucially, CF is a form of explicit instruction that is not PPP.
Types of CF
Lyster & Saito (2010) distinguish three broad categories based on the type of evidence they provide:
Recasts (reformulation, implicit)
The teacher reformulates the student's utterance, minus the error.
- Provides positive + negative evidence
- Most frequent CF type in classrooms (Lyster & Ranta, 1997)
- Can range from implicit to quite explicit depending on context
Student: "Yesterday I go to the store." Teacher: "Oh, you went to the store?"
Explicit Correction (reformulation, explicit)
The teacher provides the correct form and clearly indicates the student's utterance was incorrect.
- Provides negative + positive evidence
- Includes metalinguistic feedback (explanations, clues)
Student: "He goed home." Teacher: "Not 'goed' — the past tense of 'go' is 'went'."
Prompts (elicitation, varying explicitness)
The teacher withholds the correct form and pushes the learner to self-repair. Includes elicitation, clarification requests, and repetition of error.
- Provides negative evidence only
- Varies in "demand" — the conversational urgency to self-correct
- Differentiable from recasts and explicit correction because they withhold the correct form
Student: "I have 25 years." Teacher: "You have 25 years? How do we say that in English?" (elicitation)
Meta-Analytic Evidence
Li (2010) — 33 studies
| Finding | Detail |
|---|---|
| Overall effect | Medium, maintained over time |
| Implicit vs explicit CF | Implicit CF effects better maintained long-term |
| Lab vs classroom | Lab studies show larger effects |
| Treatment length | Shorter treatments → larger effect sizes |
| Context | Foreign language contexts → larger effects than L2 contexts |
Lyster & Saito (2010) — 15 classroom studies (N = 827)
| Finding | Detail |
|---|---|
| Overall effect | Significant and durable on target language development |
| CF type | Prompts > explicit correction > recasts |
| Outcome measure | Effects largest on free constructed response measures |
| Setting | Instructional setting not a contributing factor |
| Treatment length | Long treatments > short-to-medium |
| Age | Younger learners benefit more from CF |
Why CF Matters for the PPP Debate
CF demonstrates that explicit instruction works through mechanisms completely different from PPP:
- CF is reactive (responds to learner errors) — PPP is proactive (pre-selects what to teach)
- CF occurs within meaning-focused communication — PPP isolates form from communication
- CF addresses forms the learner is ready for (they attempted them) — PPP follows a predetermined sequence
- CF is brief and incidental — PPP devotes entire lesson phases to presentation and controlled practice
When Jason Anderson cites evidence that "explicit instruction works" to defend PPP, the corrective feedback literature is part of that evidence base — yet CF operates on entirely different principles.
References
- Li, S. (2010). The effectiveness of corrective feedback in SLA: A meta-analysis. Language Learning, 60(2), 309–365.
- Lyster, R. & Saito, K. (2010). Oral feedback in classroom SLA: A meta-analysis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 32(2), 265–302.
- Lyster, R. & Ranta, L. (1997). Corrective feedback and learner uptake. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19(1), 37–66.