Oral Corrective Feedback

Corrective feedback (CF) refers to teacher and peer responses to learners’ erroneous second language (L2) production. The recent burgeoning of research into oral CF is attributable to its pedagogical and theoretical significance. Practitioners are interested in whether, when, and how to incorporate CF in classroom instruction; theorists (for example Krashen 1981; Gass 1997) are divided over whether the negative evidence afforded by oral CF about what is ‘wrong’ or unacceptable in the target language is necessary for L2 development, or whether exposure to positive evidence about what is correct is sufficient by itself. Experimental studies to date have demonstrated that oral CF can facilitate L2 development but that its effects may be constrained by contextual factors and individual learner differences (Li 2010; Lyster and Saito 2010).