1. Oral Feedback in Classroom SLA
By Roy Lyster and Kazuya Saito

3. The Study
Meta-analysis of 15 published studies on corrective feedback.
Classroom-based studies only (as opposed to lab-based)
Factor for consideration:
Types of corrective feedback
Outcome measures
Instructional setting
Treatment length
Learner age

4. Types of Corrective Feedback
Recasts
“The teacher’s reformulation of all or part of a student’s utterance, minus the error”
Explicit Corrections
Providing the correct form while “clearly indicating what the student had said was incorrect.”
Prompts
“Withhold correct forms and instead provide clues to prompt students to retrieve these correct forms from their existing knowledge.”
Prompts can include metalinguistic clues, clarifications requests, repetition

5. Types of Corrective Feedback
Clarification Requests
Repition
Elicitation
Metalinguistic Clues
Metalinguisitc Clue and repetition or elicitation
Implicit
Explicit
PROMPTS
REFORMULATIONS
Recasts
Explicit Corrections

6. Findings about Types of Corrective Feedback
Recasts, prompts, and explicit correction are all significantly effective
Prompts were more effective than recasts
Prompts are more pedagogically oriented
Students respond the the negative evidence from prompts
Prompts impose a greater demand for students to produce modified output
Explicit corrections could not be distinguished from prompts or recasts

7. Outcome Measures 4 different types: Free constructed-response measures
Require learners to produce the target language freely without many constraints
Constrained constructed-response measures
Require learners to complete tasks in which the use of the target features was necessary.
Selected-response measures
Requires learners to select the correct answer among several alternatives
Metalinguistic judgements
Require learners to judge the grammaticality of target structures

8. Findings about Outcome Measures
Free Constructed-response measures
Most effective form of CF
CF is given in conversational context
“with relatively few constraints and with meaningful communication as the goal of L2 production”
Constrained constructed-response measures
Metalinguistic judgements
Selected-response measures

9. Durability
Measure of the effectiveness of corrective feedback from immediate to delayed posttests (outcome measures)
Immediate = within 1 week
Delayed = after 2 weeks and up to 6 weeks
Findings:
The impact of corrective feedback does not decrease between immediate and delayed posttests.
Corrective feedback has long-term learning effects.

10. Instructional Setting
Foreign Language vs
Second Language
“Second language usually has official status or a recognized function within a country which a foreign language does not” (p 280)
Findings:
There is no difference between FL and SL classrooms
Underlying learning process is essentially the same

11. Length of Treatment Brief treatments = less than 1 hr
Short treatments = 1-2 hrs
Medium treatments = 3-6 hrs
Long treatments = 7+ hrs
Findings:
Long treatments are much more effective than short to medium treatments
May not be a reliable variable to measure effectiveness

12. Age Factors Knowledge going into the study:
Child learners – Elementary (10-12 yrs old)
Young adult learners – End of high school/college (17-20 yrs old)
Adult learners- language school/community college (ESL) (~23 yrs old)
Knowledge going into the study:
older students: higher expectations for and encouraged to take more risks
Younger students: given more structure so less opportunity for mistakes.

13. Age Factors
Findings
Age contributed to a significant percentage of the variance in effectiveness of CF
Younger students are much more affected by CF than older learners
More sensitive to impact
CF engages learning mechanisms that are found more often in younger learners
Received longer treatments

14. Take away
Corrective Feedback has a significant impact on student learning
Prompting is the most effective feedback
Free constructed-response are the most effective assessment
Corrective feedback has more impact on younger learners
The study was limited so all information should be interpreted with caution, however, the findings are sufficient for use in a classroom and to guide future studies.