Revisiting Oral Corrective Feedback in Second Language Acquisition: Existing Debates and Directions for Further Studies

2. Redefining Corrective Feedback

CF began its childhood in the field of education as the teacher’s attempt, parent, or caretaker to revise a child’s inaccuracies (Hattie & Timperley (2007). Since it was first introduced in the field of language education, CF has gained attention from second language acquisition (SLA) researchers. The existing literature well documents different definitions of CF. Long (2015), Lyster (2015) and Schachter (1991) acknowledge corrective feedback, negative evidence, and negative feedback as three terms used interchangeably to correct an error. Regarding second or foreign language (L2) English contexts, CF evokes the concepts of intervention, inaccuracies, modification, and support (Long, 2007). As Lightbown and Spada (1999) noted, CF is conceptualized as the teacher’ effort to revise when they identify a student’s error. However, Gielen et al. (2010) argued that the teacher’s feedback can be used for other purposes. In fact, feedback can be employed to correct unaccepted instances or affirm a behavior. Accordingly, the teacher may give corrective feedback to signal unaccepted instances to put forward students’ performance or affirm students’ behavior for further development, suggesting that feedback includes feed-forward and can be categorized into positive and negative types. The negative types are to correct inaccuracies but the positive types are to affirm students’ performance or behavior (Long 2015; Lyster, 2015). Regarding L2 contexts, assessment of spoken and written language is not solely based on inaccuracies but L2 speakers’ performance, for which rating criteria accurately indicate speakers’ proficiency level (Baker 2012; Cumming et al., 2002). The proficiency level is broadly measured through language complexity metrics (Khabbazbashi, 2012). In the classroom, the teacher may enhance students’ language development by using corrective feedback (Yan et al., 2021), suggesting that CF should not be simply conceptualized as a tool to correct errors or inaccuracies but signal instances, including language and strategies, which are considered unacceptable compared to the expected learning outcomes. Motivated by sociocultural theory, peers can also get involved in classroom assessment and provide feedback (Bui, 2023; Bui & Nguyen, 2022).

Considering the existing definitions of CF documented in the literature of second language acquisition, we argue for a broad definition of CF as a pedagogical intervention in which feedback on students’ performance is used to modify students’ concepts or behaviors for the purpose of improving learning and accomplishment. CF, focused or unfocused, can be delivered either formally or informally and directly or indrectly by an assessor. Thus, CF can delineate students’ language problems or appraisals.