TYPES OF ORAL ERRORS AND CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK: A CLASSROOM RESEARCH STUDY IN A SAMPLE OF TURKISH EFL CLASSES

This study investigates the types of oral errors and the corrective feedback moves for these errors in a sample of Turkish EFL context. The distribution of error types and the use of corrective feedback for each error type were examined. 12 hours of video-recording were conducted in four classes with 27 preintermediate students in an English preparatory program of a state university. The video-recorded data were transcribed verbatim and analyzed with the help of a native speaker teacher to ensure inter-rater reliability. The definition of Allwright and Bailey (1991) was followed in the identification of errors, and the model proposed by Lyster and Ranta (1997) was utilized in the classification of corrective feedback moves. After the analysis, the researchers agreed on 142 erroneous utterances. Based on these utterances and corrective feedback types for them, a generally balanced distribution of errors types and corrective feedback was found with a few striking exceptions. The results showed that about 70% of errors in the observed classes have grammatical (31 %) or phonological (36.6%) origins whereas the others stem from lexical items (20.4%) or the use of L1 (12%). In addition to this, it was revealed that most of the grammatical errors were corrected through input-providing corrective feedback types (recasts and explicit correction). It was also found that teachers used recasts more while correcting their students’ phonological errors. Finally, it was seen that teachers never used elicitation to correct their students’ errors stemming from their use of L1. Depending on these results, this study suggests further classroom research studies on error types and corrective feedback to shed a light to the issue in Turkish EFL classrooms