CHAPTER II

THEORITICAL BACKGROUND

A. Corrective Feedback : A Brief Account

Feedback, in general, refers to any information on the result of

behaviour. Richards and Schmidt (2010) explained that feedback in teaching

“refers to comments or other information that learners receive concerning their

success on learning tasks or tests, either from the teacher or other persons” (p.

199). Feedback according to Ur (1996) is “information that is given to the

learner about his or her performance of a learning task, usually with the

objective of improving this performance” (p. 242). Harmer (2007)

indicated that teachers give feedback on learners' writing as they want to

"affect students’ language use in the future as well as comment upon its use in

the past” (p. 151). Furthermore, feedback can be a positive or negative

reinforcement. Feedback is an umbrella terminology that embodies CF.

However, CF is only provided where there is an error.

CF was a form of negative feedback. CF was given by the teachers

when the students use the incorrect target language. The students’ errors are

expected to be improved after they get the correction. Students’ errors could

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be grammatical errors such as the incorrect use of preposition, pronoun or

tenses; lexical errors such as nouns, verbs or adjectives; and phonological

errors. CF is indication that there are errors in a students’ use of the target

language (Ellis, 2006). There are many definitions of CF found in the literature.

Ramaprasad (1983, as cited in Taras 2005, p. 470) stated “CF is the information

about the gap between the actual level and the reference level of a system

parameter which is used to alter the gap in some way.” Nicol and Macfarlane

(2006) particularly see CF as a teacher’s domain and define it as information

provided by teachers to help students trouble-shoot their performances. In

conclusion, all definitions of CF refer to helpful information that was given to

students to say what can be done to improve students’ performance.

B. Types of Corrective Feedback

Oral and written CF constitute the object of enquiry. In oral CF

research, Lyster and Ranta (1997) identified, the data were grouped into six

types: recast, explicit correction, elicitation, metalinguistic feedback,

clarification, request, and repetition such as.

1. Recast contains the teacher incorporates the content words of the students

immediately preceding incorrect utterance and changes and corrects the

utterance in some way (e.g., phonological, syntactic, morphological or

lexical).

2. Repetition refers to the corrector’s repetition of the student’s erroneous

utterance. In most cases, the teacher adjusts their intonations so as to highlight

the error.

3. Clarification request indicates to students, their utterances were

misunderstood by the teacher or that the utterance is ill-formed in some way a

repetition or a reformulation is required.

4. Explicit correction refers to the explicit provision of the correct form. As

the teacher provides the correct form, he or she clearly indicates that what the

student had said was incorrect.

5. Elicitation refers to the teacher repeats part of the learner utterance but not

the erroneous part and uses rising intonation to signal the student should

complete it.

6. Metalinguistic explanation contains either comments, information, or

questions related to the well-formedness of the student’s utterance, without

explicitly providing the correct form.

categories of written CF. It can be identified: direct and indirect feedback.

Direct corrective feedback is referred to as a type of correction that draws

students’ attention to the error and provides a solution to it. That is to say, the

teacher shows students where their errors are and corrects these errors by

providing the correct form. This can take a variety of forms such as a) cross-

outs: when the teacher omits any wrong addition from students’ original texts,

b) rewrites: when the teacher rewrites a word, phrase or a sentence, providing

the correct spelling, structure or form on students’ original texts, and c)

additions: when the teacher adds any missing items on students’ original texts

(e.g. article, preposition, word, etc). As demonstrated by Bitchener& Ferris

(2012), direct corrective feedback aims to help students edit their writings

and improve their performances in future tasks.

As for indirect corrective feedback, it means drawing students’

attention to the locations of their errors without providing corrections.

This means underlining, circling or highlighting errors on students’

original texts, indicating the location of these errors without correcting

them. Students are required to study their errors and correct them(Ferris,

2002). Simply put, indirect corrective feedback lays emphasis on the role

of students in understanding and correcting their errors rather than being

given or shown the corrections. In underlining the writing errors, the

students should understand that there is a problem that should be ‘fixed.’

This can take the form of using lines, circles or highlighting to indicate the

location of errors. It is up to the teachers to decide how explicit indirect

feedback should be based depending on the goals they want to achieve by

providing feedback.

C. Employment of CF in English Language Learning

Lyster and Ranta (1997, henceforth L&R) introduced a refined

taxonomy for coding incidental CF in meaning-focused L2 classroom

instruction that included six prominent types of oral CF teachers provide. They

reported the following distribution in the classrooms they observed: recasts

(55%), explicit correction (10%), elicitation (11%), clarification requests

(11%), metalinguistic cues (8%), and repetition (5%). From a pedagogical

viewpoint, L&R’s study raised awareness of the full range of feedback options

that teachers have available in providing CF. Their study also had important

implications for L2 theory and research. Specifically, rather than assuming

comparable effects for all CF types, they called attention to findings that

teachers tend to rely heavily on one form of CF (recasts) but that recasts were

found to be least effective in terms of eliciting uptake and repair.

This finding spurred interest in the relationship between these and other
feedback moves found in classroom interaction (Ellis, 2010; Sheen, 2010;

Miller & Pan, 2012). L&R’s taxonomy continues to be widely adopted in

coding CF type in observational reports, allowing for comparable results across

studies regarding choices teachers make in reactive focus on form.

D. Impacts of CF in English Language Learning

The impacts of CF in English language learning acquisition has been a

highly controversial issue. This controversy is ongoing due to the fact that there are

many questions relating to CF that remain unanswered. Despite the growing evidence

of correction being useful, there are still language theorists who consider error

correction completely to be useless . Truscott (1996) assertively argued his

case against grammar correction and reached the very controversial

conclusion that, “grammar correction has no place in writing courses and

should be abandoned”. Truscott (1996) also pointed out that error correction in

oral practice does not work either. He argued that firstly, teachers correct

inconsistently, sometimes even wrongly. Next, students are sometimes hurt by

being corrected, so they may not even take corrections seriously. Finally,

correction may interfere with fluency. Truscott emphasized that students

do not learn from correction, and backs up his argument with research

results that have found grammar correction to have little or no effect on

students’ writing ability in L2 writing (Krashen, 1992).

Despite the fact that Truscott (1996) seems adamant that grammar

correction is not an important factor, the arguments contradicting these

statements are even stronger. Gass and Selinker (2001) firmly asserted

the belief that motivation is a social psychological factor and a prognosticator

of success in second language learning. They continued that “it makes

sense that individuals who are motivated will learn another language

faster and to a greater degree”. In addition to Gass and Selinker (2001),

numerous studies such as that of Basturkmen, Loewen and Ellis (2004)

confirm this point with strong evidence that feedback motivates language

learning. Therefore, feedback is still considered to be an effective way to

motivate students’ learning, especially in L2 learning. Evans, Hartshorn,

McCollum, and Wolfersberger (2010) also strongly supported this view

that operating “without such feedback is likely to frustrate learners,

erode learners’ confidence in their teachers, and undermine the learning

processes”.
E. Previous Studies on CF in English Language Learning

Many researchers have investigated about the feedback in teaching.

They did the research about the soft skills in English like writing, reading,

listening and oral. Pan (2015) has studied the teacher feedback on the accuracy

of EFL student writing. He draws the conclusion in his research if teacher

feedback has advanced the students in better linguistic knowledge and it will

improve the accuracy of students in writing with a higher degree after receiving

teacher’s CF. In the another research, Chu (2011) has stated that CF has a

positive effect on improving oral English accuracy. He has stated that CF has a

better effect on English accuracy. CF does make a great effect on oral accuracy,

but the effectiveness for a different student level is different. For the low and

medium group of students, the effectiveness is better because there is enough

space for them to improve. For the high group of students, their oral accuracy is

better, so what they need to do is improving their oral fluency and complexity.

For EFL students, making errors in using the target language is very

common. Fidan (2015) has said that students’ errors in using the target

language are “unavoidable”. In addition, Brown and Rodgers (2002) also

stated that almost all language learners (will) produce errors in learning a
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new language. This is due to the fact that English is not the first language

that the students use in daily life. In addition, in an EFL context, Indonesian

students have very limited exposures to the target language because it is only

taught in school as part of the national curriculum and there are very limited

opportunities to use it in society. Even worse, there is not enough time to get

enough practice in the target language in the classroom. Therefore, the

teacher will be the main source to correct any errors. Hedge (2000) has claimed

that feedback or error correction from teachers is needed when there is limited

exposure to the target language. In the same vein, Brown (2001) has asserted

that students are very reliant on the teacher in most EFL classes because they

have very little feedback from their society.