Negative feedback in second language (L2) learning has been of considerable interest to SLA researchers, generating a substantial amount of research (Ammar and Spada, 2006; Ellis et al., 2001; Ellis et al., 2006; Ishida, 2004; Iwashita, 2003; Leeman, 2007; Loewen, 2005; Loewen and Philp, 2006; Lyster and Izquierdo, 2009; Lyster and Ranta, 1997; Mackey, 1999; Mackey and Philp, 1998; Nassaji, 2009; Philp, 2003; Sheen, 2008; inter alia). Negative feedback, also known as corrective feedback and error correction, has typically been defined as information provided to learners about the ill-formedness of their L2 production. Feedback may occur in response to learners’ oral or written production, with oral feedback usually occurring immediately during interaction while written feedback is often provided some time after a text has been produced. Because of the differences in modality and timing of feedback, only oral feedback will be considered in this chapter. For a comprehensive overview of written feedback, see Polio (Chapter 19, this volume).
Before considering the role of feedback in L2 acquisition, it is important to note that negative feedback, particularly recasts, has been investigated in first language (L1) acquisition. Studies of child-adult interaction have found corrective feedback to occur; nevertheless, considerable debate surrounds the efficacy of corrective feedback for L1 learning (e.g., Bohannon et al., 1996; Farrar, 1992; Morgan et al., 1995; Saxton, 2005). Similarly, negative feedback has assumed an important, although controversial, role within communicative approaches to L2 instruction as a means of drawing learners’ attention to accurate language use without disrupting communicative classroom interaction. Historically, communicative language teaching generally rejected negative feedback because it was viewed as hindering learners’ attempts to communicate freely as well as being ineffective for developing implicit L2 knowledge (e.g., Krashen, 1985). However, research in content-based and immersion instruction contexts revealed that while learners often reached high levels of L2 fluency, they did not achieve correspondingly high levels of grammatical accuracy, even on frequently occurring linguistic structures. Consequently, researchers began to reconsider the role of explicit attention to language in the classroom.
Negative feedback fits broadly within the research interests of instructed SLA (Williams, Chapter 33, this volume), with theoretical support coming from an information processing view of SLA, concerned with L2 input, intake, mental representations, and output. In particular, interactionist approaches to SLA value the role of negative feedback (Gass, 1997; Gass and Mackey, 2007). Additionally, several theoretical perspectives such as socio-cultural theory (Lantolf and Thorne, 2007; Ohta, 2000) and skill acquisition theory (DeKeyser, 2007) posit roles for feedback. However, because of the extensive investigation of feedback from an interactionist paradigm, this review will concentrate on that approach.
Early interactionist studies identified negotiation of meaning as an important component of the learning process, as L2 learners and their interlocutors interactionally modified their utterances in an attempt to achieve mutual understanding (e.g., Varonis and Gass, 1985). Negative feedback began to assume increased importance in this paradigm with the advent of focus on form (Long, 1991, 1996; Long and Robinson, 1998), which advocated spontaneous and brief attention to linguistic items in response to learners’ problematic utterances within meaning-focused interaction. In this way, the use of negative feedback allowed L2 learners to integrate attention to meaning and form in ways that did not occur in focus on meaning instruction, which neglected linguistic accuracy, or in focus on forms instruction, which taught discrete linguistic forms apart from a communicative context. Following this early conceptualization of the importance of L2 interaction and focus on form, there has been a plethora of research investigating the occurrence and effectiveness of negative feedback. The next section discusses the core issues addressed by this research.
An important initial question about L2 feedback regards its existence in L2 interaction. Descriptive studies of naturally-occurring feedback in L2 classrooms have examined a variety of contexts, including immersion, ESL, EFL, and university language classes. In both communicative and more traditional L2 instructional contexts, negative feedback has been found to occur (Ellis et al., 2001; Lyster and Ranta, 1997; Yoshida, 2008); however, studies have also shown that negative feedback does not occur with equal frequency in all contexts. For example, Zyzik and Polio (2008) found that feedback was virtually absent from content-based university Spanish classes. Furthermore, Loewen (2003) discovered differences in the amount of feedback within 12 different classes at the same language school. He also found that some students did not receive any feedback during his observations, whereas others received feedback on numerous occasions. Nevertheless, these descriptive studies demonstrate that negative feedback occurs, to varying degrees, in a variety of L2 classroom contexts.
Considerable research has investigated the features of negative feedback. In an early study, Chaudron (1977) developed an extensive negative feedback taxonomy, including categories such as repetition of the error with or without changes, prompts, and explanations. Lyster and Ranta (1997) refined these categories to six: recast, elicitation, repetition, metalinguistic feedback, explicit correction, and clarification requests. Subsequently, in an attempt to move from descriptive categorization of discourse features to a more psycholinguistically-motivated taxonomy, Ellis et al. (2001) identified three main types of negative feedback: recasts, elicitations, and metalinguistic feedback. Most recently, Ellis (2008) has reduced the categories to either input-providing feedback or output-promoting feedback. Definitions of several key feedback types will now be discussed.
Probably no type of feedback has received more attention than recasts, a type of input-providing feedback that correctly reformulates a learner's erroneous utterance but maintains the learner's intended meaning (Nicolas et al., 2001; Lyster and Ranta, 1997). Recasts are the most common feedback method in the classroom (Davies, 2006; Ellis et al., 2001; Havranek, 2002; Loewen and Philp, 2006; Lyster, 1998a; Lyster and Mori, 2006; Lyster and Ranta, 1997; Yoshida, 2008). Proponents of recasts argue that they are beneficial for L2 learning because they are unobtrusive, occur immediately after the error and provide the opportunity for learners to compare their erroneous utterances with target-like forms (Long, 2007). A recast is found in Example 1.
Example 1: Recast
S: to her is good thing (.) to her is good thing
T: yeah for her it's a good thing
S: because she got a lot of money there
(Loewen and Philp, 2006: p. 538)
Recent work (Ellis and Sheen, 2006; Loewen and Philp, 2006; Sheen, 2006) has suggested that recasts are non-monolithic in nature, and that they can differ in features such as length, prosody, and number of errors corrected. In general, recasts tend to isolate the error and to contain declarative intonation (Kim and Han, 2007; Loewen and Philp, 2006; Lyster, 1998b), although other patterns have also been observed.
Apart from recasts, elicitations are another relatively frequent type of negative feedback (Ellis et al., 2001; Lyster and Mori, 2006; Lyster and Ranta, 1997). Also referred to as prompts (Ammar and Spada, 2006; Lyster, 2004) or negotiation of form (Lyster, 1998a; Lyster and Ranta, 1997), elicitations are output-prompting and consist of various feedback moves, such as repetitions or clarification requests, that encourage learners to self-correct without providing them with correct linguistic forms. Proponents of elicitations argue that elicitations are less ambiguous in their corrective intent and that they also involve the learner in deeper cognitive processing because they require learners to self-correct. Of course, learners must have some knowledge of the structure to be able to self-correct. A typical elicitation is shown in Example 2.
Example 2: Elicitation
Teacher: Il vit où un animal domestique? Où est-ce que ça vit?
“Where does a pet live? Where does it live?”
Student: Dans un maison. “In a (masc.) house.”
Teacher: Dans? Attention. “In ...? Careful.”
Student: Dans une maison. “In a (fem.) house.”
(Lyster, 2004: p. 405)
A third category of negative feedback is explicit correction, which can involve a direct indication that an utterance is incorrect and/or the use of metalinguistic terminology to indicate the nature of the error. Both types of explicit correction have been observed in the L2 classroom (Ellis et al., 2001; Lyster and Ranta, 1997). An explicit correction is shown in Example 3.
Example 3: Metalinguistic feedback
Learner: He kiss her.
Researcher: Kiss—you need past tense.
Learner: He kissed her.
(Ellis et al., 2006 p. 353)
An additional discoursal feature related to feedback is the learners’ responses to feedback, referred to as uptake (Ellis et al., 2001; Lyster, 1998a; Lyster and Ranta, 1997). Uptake is of interest because learners’ successful production of the correct form may be a possible indication of the effectiveness of feedback (Chaudron, 1977; Lightbown, 1998) particularly in light of Swain's output hypothesis (1995). Uptake has been found to occur in response to negative feedback, although its occurrence and success have been found to vary (Ellis et al., 2001; Loewen, 2005; Lyster and Ranta, 1997; Mackey and Philp, 1998; Sheen, 2004).
The effectiveness of negative feedback for L2 learning is contentious, despite its frequent occurrence in the L2 classroom. In spite of contrary arguments (e.g., Krashen, 1985; Truscott, 1999), there is mounting evidence that negative feedback can be beneficial for learners. For example, several meta-analyses (Li, 2010; Mackey and Goo, 2007; Russell and Spada, 2006) have found overall positive effects for corrective feedback. Nevertheless, the necessity of feedback for learning remains disputed (Ellis, 2006; Long, 2007), although there is some evidence that it might be necessary for learning some linguistic structures that are otherwise non-salient in the input and do not hinder communication (White, 1991).
If negative feedback can be beneficial for L2 learning, the next question to consider is which features influence its effectiveness. Given Schmidt's (1995) noticing hypothesis, it is argued that learners must notice negative feedback in order for it to be effective. As a result, numerous studies have investigated the salience of different types of feedback. In particular, controversy exists regarding the salience of recasts. On one hand, their implicit and unobtrusive nature does not interrupt the flow of communication, thereby allowing learners to pay attention to form and meaning at the same time (Long, 1991, 1996, 2007). On the other hand, recasts may go unnoticed because they are not salient enough (Lyster, 2004; Truscott, 1999). Furthermore, the corrective intent of recasts may be ambiguous because of their multiple discoursal functions (e.g., correction, confirmation check, or clarification request) and because teachers often repeat learners’ correct utterances as well as recasting their incorrect ones. As a result, Nicholas et al. (2001) suggest that recasts are most effective when their ambiguity is diminished and their corrective intent is clear. Features that may influence recast salience include prosodic emphasis, intonation, segmentation, number of changes, recast length, and number of recasts (Loewen and Philp, 2006; Sheen, 2006).
In contrast to recasts, elicitations are generally viewed as a more explicit type of feedback, although it may be better to view explicitness as a continuum rather than a dichotomy. Elicitations are generally less ambiguous in their intent, and thus may be more salient as negative evidence. The most explicit type of feedback is explicit correction, and while detractors of explicit correction argue that it can be disruptive to communicative interaction, there is some evidence that more explicit feedback may be more effective for L2 learning (Ellis et al., 2006; Norris and Ortega, 2000).
In an attempt to provide an explanatory statement regarding the salience of feedback, Lyster and Mori (2006) have proposed the counterbalance hypothesis which suggests that feedback will be more effective when it contrasts with a class's predominant communicative orientation. Accordingly, the more communicatively-focused the class, the more explicit the feedback needs to be. This hypothesis is awaiting further investigation.
Another issue in considering the effectiveness of feedback is whether it is effective because it provides positive evidence, negative evidence, or both. On the one hand, negative evidence, indicating that a linguistic construction is not possible, is argued to be a central component of corrective feedback (Long, 2007; White, 1991). On the other hand, positive evidence, consisting of exemplars of what is possible in a language, has also been shown to be an important component of corrective feedback (Leeman, 2003).
The effectiveness of feedback may also be contingent on the linguistic items targeted by that feedback. Any aspect of language can receive feedback, although grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation are the most common targets in classroom contexts (Ellis et al., 2001; Lyster and Ranta, 1997). In quasi-experimental studies, grammatical structures have been the primary focus, as can be seen in Table 2.1. Popular targets of inquiry have included English question formation and past tense, while fewer studies have been conducted in other languages or on other features. Furthermore, almost no research has investigated feedback on pragmatics or discourse features.
Table 2.1 Linguistic features targeted in quasi-experimental feedback studies
| Linguistic Structure | Study |
ENGLISH |
|
| Regular past tense | Adams (2007); Dabaghi and Basturkmen (2009); Doughty and Varela (1998); Ellis (2007); Ellis et al. (2006); Loewen and Erlam (2006); Mackey (2006); McDonough (2007); Nobuyoshi and Ellis (1993); Yang and Lyster (2010) |
| Past progressive | Révész and Han (2006) |
| Past-tense conditionals | Doughty and Varela (1998) |
| Irregular past tense | Dabaghi and Basturkmen (2009); Yang and Lyster (2010) |
| Tense consistency | Han (2002) |
| Questions | Adams (2007); Loewen and Nabei (2007); Mackey and Philp (1998); Mackey and Silver (2005); Mackey (1999, 2006); McDonough and Mackey (2006); Philp (2003); Spada and Lightbown (1993) |
| Locatives | Adams (2007) |
| Vocabulary | Adams (2007); Alcón and García Mayo (2008); Trofimovitch et al. (2007) |
| Backshifted verbs | Sachs and Suh (2007) |
| Articles | Muranoi (2000); Sheen (2007) |
| Definite article | Dabaghi and Basturkmen (2009) |
| Indefinite article | Dabaghi and Basturkmen (2009) |
| Zero article with abstract | Sauro (2009) |
count nouns |
|
| Comparatives | Ellis (2007) |
| Plurals | Dabaghi and Basturkmen (2009); Mackey (2006) |
| Relative clause | Dabaghi and Basturkmen (2009) |
| Voice | Dabaghi and Basturkmen (2009) |
| Third-person–s | Dabaghi and Basturkmen (2009) |
| Possessive determiners | Ammar and Spada (2006); Ammar (2008); Lyster (2004); Trofimovitch et al. (2007) |
| Multiple, incidental forms | Havranek (2002); Loewen (2005); Nabei and Swain (2002) |
FRENCH |
|
| Gender marking on articles | Lyster and Izquierdo (2009) |
| Gender marking on nouns | Lyster (2004) |
SPANISH |
|
| Noun adjective agreement | Leeman (2003); Sagarra (2007) |
| Direct object placement | Long et al. (1998) |
| Adverb placement | Long et al. (1998) |
KOREAN |
|
| Object relative clauses | Jeon (2007) |
| Honorifics | Jeon (2007) |
| Verbs | Jeon (2007) |
| Nouns | Jeon (2007) |
JAPANESE |
|
| Locatives | Iwashita (2003); Long et al. (1998) |
| Aspectual –te i-(ru) | Ishida (2004); Iwashita (2003) |
Learners’ proficiency levels are also a consideration, with studies suggesting that learners need to be developmentally ready to benefit from feedback (Mackey, 1999; Mackey and Philp, 1998; Trofimovitch et al., 2007). Additionally, there may be an interaction between proficiency and type of feedback. For example, Ammar and Spada (2006) found that higher proficiency students benefited equally from recasts and prompts, while lower proficiency learners benefited more from prompts than recasts.
The timing of feedback is also important. Generally, feedback occurs immediately after an error, and this juxtaposition of incorrect and correct forms is argued to benefit learners (Doughty, 2001; Long, 2007; Saxton, 1997, 2005). However, delayed feedback is also possible, particularly in computer-mediated communication (CMC) where the nature of synchronous written chat often means that feedback is not contingent to the error (Smith, 2003).
A final potentially influential characteristic of feedback is the amount of feedback provided to the targeted feature. Long's (1991, 1996) original definition of focus on form does not specify the ideal amount of feedback. Indeed, the construct of incidental focus on form (Ellis, 2001; Loewen, 2005) assumes that a linguistic structure may receive only one feedback episode. By contrast, feedback treatments in quasi-experimental studies have ranged from 30 minutes to 120 minutes. In his meta-analysis, Li (2010) found that treatments of 50 minutes or less were significantly more effective than were longer treatments. Additionally, Havranek (2002) found no advantage for correcting the same linguistic error multiple times as opposed to correcting it only once. Further investigations into the effects of the intensity of feedback are needed.
In addition to features of the feedback itself, there are also contextual features that may influence the effectiveness of feedback. These factors will be considered in turn.
Instructional variables. Negative feedback studies have been conducted in contexts, such as immersion classes, language school classes, and laboratories. One possible explanation for differences in results has been these varying contexts. For example, studies of immersion classes (Lyster 1998a,b; Lyster and Ranta, 1997) have found lower rates of feedback and uptake than studies conducted in communicative classes in language schools (Ellis et al., 2001; Loewen, 2003; Sheen, 2004), and these differences have been suggested to be due to the learning goals of each environment. Additionally, concerns exist about the generalizability of laboratory studies to the classroom context; however, Gass et al.’s (2005) comparison of tasks in both a laboratory and classroom context found no differences in the interactional patterns between the two. Finally, studies have also begun to investigate, both descriptively and quasi-experimentally, negative feedback in CMC contexts (Loewen and Erlam, 2006; Sachs and Suh, 2007; Sagarra, 2007; Sauro, 2009).
Interlocutor variables. The role of the interlocutor in providing feedback can be another mediating variable. In most classroom studies, teachers have provided the majority of feedback (Oliver, 2000; Zhao and Bitchener, 2007). However, learners can and do provide feedback to each other, and while most of this feedback is accurate, there are instances of learners providing incorrect feedback (Adams, 2007). The accuracy of teacher feedback has not been investigated.
Other interlocutor variables, such as gender, L1 status, and age, have been investigated both separately and jointly. Studies of gender have found both differences between males and females (Ross-Feldman, 2007) and no differences (Oliver, 2002). Regarding the L1 or L2 speaker status of the interlocutor, several studies found differences, such as more negotiation in non-native speaker (NNS) dyads (Oliver, 2002) and more elicitations from L2 speakers and more reformulations from L1 speakers (Sato and Lyster, 2007). Additionally, age has been considered as a variable since it is possible that the differing cognitive aspects of children, adolescents, and adults may influence the effectiveness of feedback. Several feedback studies have investigated pre-adolescent learners and found that children can and do both provide and receive feedback (Mackey and Silver, 2005; Oliver, 2000, 2002) although it is not always in the same amount or type as adults (Oliver, 2000). Additionally, Mackey et al. (2003) found an interaction between L1 status and age, with adults native speakers providing significantly more feedback than NNS; however, for children there was no difference in the provision of feedback, although there was significantly more modified output in response to NNS.
One final interlocutor variable is whether learners are the direct recipients of feedback or merely observers of it. Some studies suggest that observers do not notice feedback as well as those who are the direct recipients of it (Mackey, 1999) while other studies suggest that observing feedback is as beneficial as receiving it (Havranek, 2002; Kim and Han, 2007; Ohta, 2000).
In order to investigate these core issues, researchers have employed a number of different methodologies, which will be described in this section.
One of the most important types of data for feedback research is oral production, with the utterances of both feedback provider and feedback recipient receiving attention. Considerable research has investigated the amount and types of feedback in naturally-occurring classrooms (Chaudron, 1977; Ellis et al., 2001; Loewen, 2003; Lyster, 1998a,b; Lyster and Ranta, 1997; Sheen 2004; Yoshida, 2008). Such studies have high ecological validity because they describe actual classroom discourse. However, these studies are limited in the conclusions that they can draw about the effectiveness of feedback since they do not employ measures of L2 learning.
In addition to classroom observations, researchers have also investigated the occurrence of feedback in more controlled, laboratory contexts. In this way researchers have been able to investigate feedback variables in a more systematic and intentional manner. Laboratory-based studies can be either descriptive or quasi-experimental, with the former generally involving dyads of speakers that have been chosen according to specific characteristics, such as L1, age, sex, proficiency level, etc. Researchers then can describe the amount and types of feedback that occur given these different variables.
The utterances produced in both classroom and laboratory contexts have been analyzed using several similar taxonomies that take into account all or some of the following categories: the erroneous utterance that triggers the feedback, the feedback move itself, and the optional response to the feedback. The triggers are often coded for the general types of linguistic errors they contain, whether morphological, syntactic, phonological, or lexical. The feedback moves have been coded using taxonomies that attempt to categorize every type of feedback move or that attempt to differentiate only characteristics that may influence the learning potential of the feedback. Finally, some studies have investigated learners’ responses to the feedback, which has alternatively been called repair, successful uptake, or modified output.
While descriptive studies of learner interaction have contributed to our understanding of how feedback occurs, these studies do not provide information about the effectiveness of the feedback, apart from learners’ production of uptake. Therefore, quasi-experimental studies have used pretest, treatment, post-test designs to investigate the issue of learning, which can be operationalized in terms of increased accuracy or progress along an acquisitional sequence (Ellis, 2006).
Measures of accuracy. The majority of the studies of negative feedback have operationalized learning as increased accurate use of the targeted linguistic items, with several different types of instruments used to measure accuracy (Doughty, 2003).
Production tests. A common method of measuring accuracy is by eliciting learner production of the targeted linguistic items. Oral production tests, some with the same design as the treatment tasks, are often used (Ammar and Spada, 2006; Loewen and Nabei, 2007; Long et al., 1998; Lyster, 2004; Lyster and Izquierdo, 2009; Mackey and Silver, 2005; Mackey, 2006; Sachs and Suh, 2007; Spada and Lightbown, 1993; Trofimovitch et al., 2007). Such tasks include information gap, picture description, and spot-the-differences tasks. After the learner production is recorded, it is generally coded using a target-like use analysis to arrive at a percentage of accurate use (Ellis and Barkhuizen, 2005). In addition to oral production tasks, some studies have also employed written production tasks (Han, 2002; Lyster, 2004; Révész and Han, 2006; Sagarra, 2007). Other types of production tests include sentence creation (Sagarra, 2007), fill-in-the-blank (Révész and Han, 2006), and meta-linguistic knowledge tests (Ellis, 2007). Finally, some studies have examined learners’ subsequent production of targeted forms in classroom interaction (Havranek, 2002; Loewen, 2007).
A drawback of many production tests is that it is not always possible to ensure production of the desired linguistic items, as learners can be very adept at avoiding using them. Consequently another option is to use an elicited imitation test in which learners are provided with oral stimuli that include either grammatical or ungrammatical exemplars of the target structure; learners are then asked to repeat the items correctly (Ellis, 2007). Imitation tests arguably force learners to draw on their implicit L2 knowledge in order to reconstruct the sentence.
Grammaticality judgment tests. Numerous studies have used grammaticality judgment tests (GJTs) to measure gains in learners’ ability to identify grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. An advantage of GJTs is that they can test the specific structures targeted in the feedback treatment; however, there has been concern that GJTs may be better measures of learners’ explicit, rather than implicit, L2 knowledge. In addition, GJTs are receptive, decision-making tasks and do not elicit learner production of the target form. These limitations have been countered in numerous studies by the use of both GJTs and other types of tests (Ellis, 2007; Ellis et al., 2006; Loewen and Nabei, 2007; Long et al., 1998; Sachs and Suh, 2007).
Individualized, tailor-made tests. The previous tests are generally administered to measure the effects of feedback on a particular linguistic item. However, spontaneous feedback can target various and multiple linguistic items within one activity. In these instances the standard pre-test/post-test design is not feasible because the targeted linguistic items are not known ahead of time, and thus cannot be pre-tested. In these cases, post-hoc tailor-made tests have been used to specifically test individual students on the linguistic items that they themselves received feedback on (Adams, 2007; Dabaghi and Basturkmen, 2009; Egi, 2007b; Havranek, 2002; Loewen, 2005; Nabei and Swain, 2002; Williams, 1999). Test features may include production of the correct form, multiple choice, GJT, etc. Recently, Nassaji (2009) has attempted to pre-test linguistic items that subsequently receive spontaneous negative feedback by having learners perform the same task as a written pre-test and then an oral treatment session. This innovative design shows some promise, although not all linguistic errors in the pre-test received feedback during the oral interaction.
Developmental stages. Another way of investigating the effectiveness of feedback is by examining learners’ progress through developmental stages (Pienemann and Keβler, Chapter 14, this volume). Often studies use similar language production instruments as those in studies that measure accuracy. In fact, both accuracy and development are sometimes investigated in the same study. Thus, it is the analysis of the data that differs. Rather than employing a target-like use analysis, researchers code the different linguistic stages found in the data. Increased use of higher stages, rather than increased accuracy, is viewed as a sign of learning. Studies have looked at learners’ progression through stages of English question formation (Loewen and Nabei, 2007; Mackey, 1999; Mackey and Silver, 2005; Spada and Lightbown, 1993) and possessive determiners (Ammar, 2008).
Some studies distinguish between measuring learners’ accurate production of linguistic stimuli that were used in the treatment (sometimes called “old” items) as well as novel stimuli that did not occur in the treatment session, in order to investigate learners’ ability to generalize the feedback to new linguistic items (Ellis et al., 2006; McDonough, 2007; Sagarra, 2007; Sauro, 2009).
Timing of tests. Another issue, in addition to the types of instruments used to measure L2 learning, is the timing of their administration. Most quasi-experimental studies include, at minimum, a pre-test and a post-test. Immediate post-tests may occur up to one or two days after the treatment, while delayed post-tests may occur anywhere from one week to several months after the treatment. Given that several studies have found effects on delayed post-tests but not on immediate post-tests (Ellis et al., 2006; Mackey, 1999) and that some researchers argue that the effects of feedback may not be evident immediately, delayed post-testing is considered important.
Because noticing is such an important construct in the theoretical support for negative feedback, recent research has begun to investigate the cognitive processes that learners engage in during negative feedback. Mackey (2006) operationalized noticing as “a learner's report indicating a mismatch between the target language form and the learner's non-target-like production or comprehension” (p. 413). Again, several different types of instruments have been used, sometimes within the same study, to elicit this information.
Sometimes learners are simply asked to report what they have noticed during interaction sessions by using learning journals or interview questions (Alcón and García Mayo, 2008; Mackey, 2006). Similar to self-report, stimulated recall has also been used to measure noticing (Gass and Mackey, 2000). While self-report relies entirely on learners’ memories of the interaction, stimulated recall provides stimuli in the form of video or audio clips of negative feedback episodes that occurred in class. After viewing the clips, learners are asked to verbalize their thoughts at the time of feedback. If learners mention the targeted linguistic structure or the corrective nature of the interaction, this is taken to be evidence of noticing. There have been several studies employing stimulated recall of student's thoughts (Egi, 2004, 2007a, 2007b; Mackey et al., 2000; Mackey et al., 2002; Mackey et al., 2007).
In an effort to avoid the memory decay that can occur in stimulated recall, several studies (Bigelow et al., 2006; Philp, 2003) have used immediate repetition as a measure of learners’ noticing of recasts. After a recast is given, the researcher knocks on the desk as a signal for the learner to repeat the last few words that they remembered hearing. If the repetition includes the correct form, this is taken as evidence of noticing.
Similar to immediate repetition, immediate report attempts to investigate learners’ cognition as close to the time of feedback as possible. Learners also hear a knock after feedback, but instead of repeating what they just heard, they are asked to verbalize any thoughts they remember from the immediately preceding interaction. After the report, the communicative interaction continues. Egi (2004, 2007a) has compared immediate report (occurring during the interaction) and stimulated recall (occurring after the interaction) and found that the two groups did not differ in subsequent production of the targeted form; however, stimulated recall protocols were longer than the immediate reports, and memory decay was an issue for stimulated recall participants.
While noticing and learning have been the two main constructs investigated directly in negative feedback research, several additional constructs related to individual differences have been investigated as potential moderator variables in the effectiveness of negative feedback. These variables include analytical ability, phonological memory, working memory, and attention control (Mackey et al., 2002; Trofimovitch et al., 2007). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss in detail the measurement of these constructs.
Is feedback beneficial? There are three main indicators of the effectiveness of feedback which will be considered in this section: uptake, noticing, and learning.
Uptake. It has been argued that uptake/modified output is a possible indication that feedback has been noticed and a possible facilitator of learning (Chaudron, 1977; Ellis et al., 2001; Lightbown, 1998; Swain, 1995). Studies have found that feedback can result in successfully modified output (Sagarra, 2007), although factors such as age (Oliver et al., 2008) and instructional context (Lyster and Mori, 2006) can influence the amount of modified output. In addition, recasts generally have lower uptake rates than do elicitations or more explicit feedback moves (Davies, 2006; Lyster and Ranta, 1997). Some studies suggest a relationship between modified output in response to feedback and learning (Loewen, 2005; McDonough, 2005); however, other studies have not found such a relationship (Mackey and Philp, 1998) or have found it to be tenuous (Alcón and García Mayo, 2008).
Noticing. Given that noticing is argued to be an essential cognitive process for L2 learning, and since interaction and negative feedback are claimed to draw attention to linguistic items, a number of studies have investigated the noticeability of negative feedback. Several studies have shown that learners can notice recasts, with noticing operationalized as discussed earlier. Multiple studies have found that shorter recasts with fewer changes are more noticeable (Egi, 2007a; Kim and Han, 2007; Philp, 2003). Also, learners who were developmentally ready were more likely to notice recasts (Philp, 2003). Kim and Han (2007) found that students were largely able to identify the intent of the recasts, as indicated by the teachers. However, Mackey et al. (2007) found that learners noticed the correct intent more for explicit feedback and interrogative recasts, while declarative recasts and combinations of feedback had lower rates of noticing. Egi (2007a, b) found that feedback was more beneficial when learners noticed the linguistic nature of the feedback, as either positive or negative evidence, rather than viewing the feedback as a response to content alone. However, several studies have argued that recasts are less noticeable. For example, Lyster's (1998b) study found that teacher repetitions and teacher recasts occurred in roughly equal proportions, suggesting that the corrective nature of the recast is ambiguous. Nevertheless, Mackey (2006) found a significant association between reports of noticing and linguistic development, leading her to conclude that “these data seem to point to a relationship between noticing and learning of question formation” (p. 422).
Several studies have found that feedback on certain aspects of language are noticed more frequently than others, with most reporting that feedback targeting morphological and syntactic errors is more difficult to notice than lexical and phonological errors (Carpenter et al., 2006; Gass and Lewis, 2007; Kim and Han, 2007; Mackey et al., 2000; Trofimovitch et al., 2007). However, Egi (2007a) found similar levels of perception for morphosyntax and lexis, with a possible explanation being that morphosyntactic recasts in her study were more frequent and more consistently targeting the same structures than were recasts in other studies. In Mackey et al. (2007) students recognized the corrective intent of feedback most for morphology/lexis, next for syntax, and least for phonology.
In addition, studies have investigated the role that the student plays in the discourse, whether they are the direct recipient of the feedback or only an observer. Mackey et al. (2007) found a higher percentage of recognition of feedback for primary recipients, although observers also indicated noticing feedback. In contrast, Ohta (2000) was more positive about the benefits of recasts for observers, finding that observers of negative feedback often produced the target form in private speech, suggesting that recasts can be salient, and that learners were sensitive to the corrective nature of the recasts. Kim and Han (2007) found no difference in receivers’ or observers’ ability to notice recasts.
Finally, as for the impact of individual differences on noticing, Trofimovitch et al. (2007) did not find that individual factors such as attention control, phonological/working memory, or analytical ability influenced the level of noticing. In contrast, Bigelow et al. (2006) and Tarone and Bigelow (2007) found that participants with higher alphabetic print literacy skills recalled recasts better. Mackey et al. (2002) found a positive correlation between noticing and working memory capacity.
L2 learning. Multiple studies have investigated the effects of negative feedback for L2 learning. In general, studies have found an effect for feedback, although there are exceptions (e.g., Loewen and Erlam, 2006). Some studies have investigated the effects of feedback without comparing them with other feedback groups or interaction-only groups and found that feedback improves learners’ subsequent ability to use the structures. These studies include some of mixed types of feedback on various incidentally targeted linguistic items (Loewen, 2005), mixed types of feedback on specific linguistic structures (Adams, 2007), and specific types of feedback, such as recasts on specific linguistic structures (Révész and Han, 2006; Sachs and Suh, 2007; Trofimovitch et al., 2007).
Other studies have found that feedback was more effective than interaction alone, but they did not compare different types of feedback (Mackey, 1999; Mackey and Silver, 2005). Several studies found that interaction with recasts or a combination of feedback types were better than interaction without feedback (Doughty and Varela, 1998; Han, 2002; Sagarra, 2007), and at least one small-scale study found that clarification requests were more effective than no feedback (Nobuyoshi and Ellis, 1993).
Additional research has compared different types of feedback along with a control group, and found that while feedback was effective, there was no difference for the type of feedback (Ammar and Spada, 2006; Loewen and Nabei, 2007; McDonough, 2007). However, not all studies have found feedback to be equally effective. Several studies have found metalinguistic feedback or explicit feedback to have a significantly larger effect on post-test performance than other types of feedback such as recasts (Dabaghi and Basturkmen, 2009; Ellis et al., 2006; Sauro, 2009; Sheen, 2007). However, Sauro (2009) found that the effect for metalinguistic feedback was only present on test items that were included in the treatment sessions; learners were not able to generalize to novel items in the test stimuli.
Some studies have found an overall effect in favor of prompts, which elicit self-corrections from learners rather than providing them with the correct form (Ammar, 2008; Havranek, 2002; Yang and Lyster, 2010). However, at least one study (Nassaji, 2009) has found that recasts resulted in higher accuracy scores than did elicitations, particularly on immediate post-tests. He also found that more explicit types of feedback, whether recasts or elicitations, resulted in higher accuracy scores.
In addition to studies that have investigated the effects of feedback by itself, several studies have investigated the effects of feedback plus other instructional interventions. For example, Lyster (2004) included form-focused instruction (FFI), as well as prompts and recasts, as variables in his investigation of their effects on the learning of French gender. He found that while FFI was beneficial, FFI with prompts was the most effective. In contrast, Lyster and Izquierdo (2009) in a study that included FFI plus feedback (either recast or prompt) found no difference in their effectiveness.
Other factors influencing the effectiveness of feedback. In addition to types of feedback, some studies have investigated the moderating effects of other variables on L2 learning. For example, the proficiency level of learners appears to be an important factor, with higher proficiency learners more able to benefit from feedback (Ammar and Spada, 2006; Mackey and Philp, 1998; Trofimovitch et al., 2007).
Other individual difference variables have been investigated. For example, Mackey et al. (2002) suggest that low working memory scores were associated with initial interlanguage development, but learners with higher working memory scores showed more development on delayed tests. Sagarra (2007) found that higher working memory was associated with development of linguistic accuracy for the recast group but not the control group. Trofimovitch et al. (2007) found that, while phonological memory and analytical ability contributed to learners’ improvement, attention control was the highest significant predictor of accuracy. Sheen (2007) found that language analytic ability correlated with accuracy scores for learners who received metalinguistic feedback but not for those who received recasts. Finally, Sheen (2008) found that, in general, feedback was more effective for learners with lower levels of anxiety. While these studies of individual differences are insightful, they are not sufficient in number to permit the types of generalizations made possible by synthetic analysis. As a result, meta-analyses such as Russell and Spada (2006), Mackey and Goo (2007) and Li (2010) have investigated the general effectiveness of corrective feedback; however, they have not been able to systematically explore such individual differences.
The role of negative feedback is highly relevant for instructional contexts, with existing research suggesting that teachers can effectively incorporate it into their more communicative activities. However, the question of what type of negative feedback is most effective is less clear, as the previous review of studies has shown. Given that there is no consensus on the superiority of one type of feedback over another, it could be best to include a variety of feedback options. In addition, there is some evidence that suggests that if teachers go to the effort of providing negative feedback, they should also ensure that students produce the correct forms.
One problem with using research as a guide for teaching is that much of the research focuses on planned focus on form in which one or two linguistic items are targeted intensively. However, descriptive research shows that negative feedback inside classrooms is generally more extensive and targets multiple forms on only one or two occasions.
Several studies also suggest that teachers’ beliefs about negative feedback are important factors. For example, teachers may express their beliefs in the superiority of specific types of feedback; however, the types of feedback they provide in the classroom may not correspond with their expressed beliefs (Basturkmen et al., 2004; Yoshida, 2008). Mackey et al. (2004) suggest that providing workshops on negative feedback can help raise teachers’ awareness of this issue and that teachers with more experience are likely to provide more feedback.
Learners’ views on negative feedback are also worth considering. Different types of learners may have different opinions about feedback (Loewen et al., 2009) and different views of feedback may affect its effectiveness. For example, Sheen (2007) found a correlation between learners’ positive attitudes toward feedback and improved accuracy scores for learners who received metalinguistic feedback.
While considerable research has investigated the role of negative feedback, there are still questions to which we do not have clear answers. For instance, although meta-analyses of negative feedback have found a significant main effect, these studies have commented on the lack of studies available to conduct secondary analyses. Therefore, more studies which compare the effects of different types of feedback will enhance future meta-analyses. Other issues to address include the intensity of feedback necessary for noticing and learning. Some studies of negative feedback have examined spontaneous, one-off episodes, while other studies have provided treatments of one hour or longer. Li's (2010) meta-analysis suggests that a medium duration of feedback was more beneficial than longer or shorter amounts; however, few studies have directly investigated this issue. Finally, it is also probable that different linguistic items may require more or less feedback. Given that many negative feedback studies have targeted one or two English structures, there is a need for additional studies of other languages and linguistic structures.
In sum, although considerable research has investigated the role of negative feedback, there are still numerous variables which are not well understood. Further research into the effects of negative feedback will continue to provide insight into both SLA theory and pedagogy.
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