The study investigated (1) the relationship between corrective feedback types and errors by bilingual elementary students in speaking; (2) corrective feedback type that leads to high uptake; (3) uptake commonly made by bilingual elementary students in response to incidental corrective feedback; and (4) perspectives of elementary classroom teachers and bilingual young learners on the provision, frequency, and timing of corrective feedback.
The study involved classroom teachers in grades 1 to 5 and bilingual elementary students. A total of 20 classroom teachers and 362 elementary students able to speak English, Bahasa Indonesia, and Mandarin Chinese from a school implementing an international curriculum took part in the research. Class observations, interviews with classroom teachers and students, and questionnaires were used in the qualitative and quantitative study.
The study revealed that (1) different corrective feedback types, namely recast, explicit correction, clarification request, metalinguistic feedback, repetition, and elicitation were not specifically linked with phonological, grammatical, and lexical errors in speaking; (2) recast led to high uptake in the form of incorporation but not student-generated repair; (3) repetition was the most common type of uptake by bilingual elementary students; and (4) classroom teachers and elementary students wanted teachers to correct errors and give delayed error correction but have different perspectives on the frequency of doing it. For classroom teachers, learners’ errors have to be corrected all the time but for the bilingual grades 1 to 5 students, errors have to be corrected sometimes.
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Peer application of corrective feedback and repeated error by another student are new kinds of uptake based on the results of the classroom-based research. Peer application of corrective feedback is a form of high uptake and repeated error by another student is an example of low uptake.
In the recommended corrective feedback diagram, immediate and delayed corrective feedback are not only provided by teachers, but also by students, and that corrective feedback leads to high uptake and low uptake. The study also revealed that when classroom teachers do not give wait time and opportunity for students to respond, uptake does not occur. High uptake, low uptake, or no uptake can be the result of giving corrective feedback.
High uptake takes the form of repetition, incorporation, self-repair, peer-repair, or peer application of corrective feedback. Low uptake involves acknowledgement, same error by the same student, different error, off target, hesitation, partial repair, or repeated error by another student.
The results of the study showed that students are capable of doing self-repair and peer repair. For students to do self-repair and peer repair, there is a need to notice errors in their own utterances as well as in their partners’ utterances. The occurrence of self-repair and peer repair, however, is minimal in the research as recast and explicit correction were the most frequent corrective feedback types used by elementary classroom teachers. Repetition and incorporation were the forms of uptake that commonly resulted from recast and explicit correction. As recast and explicit correction provide the correct forms, they did not lead to student-generated repair. Self-repair and peer-repair followed clarification requests, metalinguistic feedback, and repetition.
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Clarification requests, metalinguistic feedback, and repetition, however, were rarely used by participating classroom teachers.
As revealed by the results of the study, if learner error is not corrected, there is topic continuation or topic change. Being the facilitators in classroom discussions, teachers usually initiate topic continuation and topic change. Topic continuation, topic change, no opportunity, and no time to respond prevent students from responding to corrective feedback |