THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK, AFFECT, AND ORAL ENGLISH IMPROVEMENT

The purpose of this dissertation study was to examine not only how teachers’ oral corrective feedback (CF) interacted with students’ affective variables (anxiety, attitude, motivation, and self-confidence) to affect how advanced-level ESL students learned oral English, but also how these students’ prior experiences of learning English in their home countries’ distinct classroom cultures influenced their perceptions of error noticing and their responses to CF in the United States. Based on this data, the study proposes an integrated loop model of CF and student learning in SLA. The present study uses a mixed method design with a combination of quantitative and qualitative data. More specifically, it uses a dominant-less dominant design: QUAN/qual sequential (Creswell, 1995). This approach allowed the researcher to reveal the relationships between teachers’ oral CF and positive changes in students’ affective variables, as well as between teachers’ oral CF and students’ perceived improvement of oral English proficiency. The data were collected through multiple methods such as classroom observations, survey questionnaires, and in-depth follow-up interviews with 40 students, amassing a substantial combination of quantitative and qualitative data. The study produced several important results. First of all, the four observed classrooms mainly featured three types of CF: recasts (33.28% of all the CF observed), explicit corrections with metalinguistic explanation (20.80%), and clarification requests (24.96%). All three types had relatively high repair rates (>80%), with explicit corrections with metalinguistic explanation garnering the highest cumulative repair rate (92.59%), followed by recasts (86.11%) and clarification requests (84.57%). Thanks to this CF, the students' self-rated levels of overall oral English proficiency increased substantially from pretest to posttest in phonological features, lexical features, grammatical features, and general oral English skills. The participants also benefited from bountiful classroom discussion: despite many years of learning English in their home countries, their oral communication skills were severely underdeveloped due to a lack of opportunities to output what they had learned. Their learning was thus dramatically and positively influenced by their teachers’ intensive and consistent oral CF. Moreover, CF significantly impacted the students’ affective variables. Based on the survey data, students generally did not relate their teachers’ oral CF with strong negative emotions such as fear, embarrassment, or avoidance. Rather, they generally viewed CF as an enjoyable and valuable learning experience, and demonstrated a strong willingness to get it from their teachers. More specifically, they associated getting CF with decreased anxiety levels, higher motivation to learn English, and higher self-confidence in speaking English, even outside the classroom. CF also improved students’ error noticing: 75% of the respondents stated that CF allowed them to be more sensitive to their erroneous utterances, and that recognizing their errors motivated them to improve their oral English. CF helped the participants to communicate well with other people in English, and to make their oral English more comprehensible in a natural way. Therefore, CF acted as a trigger to catalyze improvements in adult L2 learners’ anxiety, attitude, motivation, and self-confidence, and to develop their English oral proficiency.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

EDU Teaching and Learning

Grantor dc:publisher

The Ohio State University

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Lee, Eun Jeong

Contributors dc:contributor

• Hirvela, Alan
• Moore, Leslie

• Foreign Language
• Teaching

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1363710062

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:osu1363710062