Teacher's corrective feedback: Focus on initiations to self-repair

학습자의 오류에 대한 교사의 오류 수정: 학습자 자기 교정 유도를 중심으로

This study explores teacher's corrective feedback types in an error treatment sequence in Korean EFL classroom setting. Corrective feedback moves are coded as explicit correction, recast, or initiations to self-repair. The frequency and distribution of each corrective feedback type are examined. But the special focus was given on feedback types eliciting learner's self-repair (clarification request, metalinguistic feedback, elicitation, and repetition of error) because initiations to self-repair are believed to facilitate language learning more than other strategies. The results of the study are as follows. First, there was an overwhelming tendency for teacher to use recasts whereas initiations to self-repair were not used as much as recast (52.4% vs. 29.5%). Second, the teacher tended to select feedback types in accordance with error types: namely, recasts after phonological, lexical, and translation errors and initiations to self-repair after grammatical errors though the differences were not significant. Finally, teacher's belief and students' expectation on corrective feedback were compared with actual corrective feedback representations respectively and some mismatches were found. Though both teacher and the students acknowledged the importance and necessity of self-repair, self-repair were not put into practice as such. Therefore, this study suggests more initiations to self-repair be used for effective language learning.