Before correction After correction
122 P2: I...fico no celular....all day Negative feedback in remediation stage:
Correction: I stay on my phone all day P2: Yes…OK!
Excerpt 4 from treatment cycle 3 (use of fillings):
Utterance in independent practice:
P4: It’s…como é mermo...raining today a lot!
Negative feedback in remediation stage:
Correction: It’s raining a lot today?
P4: (no answer).
The samples above demonstrate unsuccessful corrective feedback. In both excerpts, I used recast as a an input-providing corrective strategy. They were unsuccessful because, in excerpt 3, P2 only confirmed receiving my feedback, not reproducing the corrected form. In excerpt 4, P4 did not reply anything, which does not demonstrate any noticing or learning, although my feedback was intonated as a question. In sum, I used predominantly recast in the first three treatment cycles to unsuccessfully correct the use of L1.
In order to interpret such result, I revisited the theory and found in the article “Factors Affecting the Success of Corrective Feedback” by Havranek and Cesnik (2001) a possible explanation: participants might not have been developmentally ready to notice recasts in that type of error. Therefore, I addressed that issue in group interview 3 and participants’ response can be seen by the excerpts below.
Excerpt 5 (P3, group interview 1):
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Professor, eu pensei que o Sr. estivesse só me mostrando o certo mesmo, mas sem esperar que eu falasse alguma coisa depois.
Excerpt 6 (P6, group interview 2):
Eu sei que eu falei português no meio da frase porque estava com gente me olhando gravar o áudio. Mas, como depois eu terminei a frase normalmente, pensei que tinha acertado. Aí o Sr. mandou aquele áudio repetindo a minha frase, eu até pensei que tinha gostado do que eu falei!
The excerpts above demonstrate that learners did not notice they were being corrected, let alone fix their utterance after correction. The lack of noticing reported in the group interview and the insight from the article led me to try a more explicit, output-promoting type of feedback with this type of global error. Consequently, I started to apply metalinguistic feedback and elicitation in treatment cycle 4. The excerpts bellow illustrate this.
Excerpt 7 from treatment cycle 4 (use of Portuguese words) Utterance in independent practice:
P3: How much is these…óculos de sol? (instructional practice) Negative feedback in remediation stage:
Correction: How do you say “óculos de sol” in English?
P3: Sunglasses.
Correction: Repeat that sentence in English, please.
P3: How much is these sunglasses?
Excerpt 8 from treatment cycle 5 (use of fillings)
124 Utterance in independent practice:
P7: Can I…vê aí, Felipe!...eh... visit…é isso?... a zoo in Soure?
Negative feedback in remediation stage:
Correction: Say that again, only in English.
P7: Can I visit a zoo in Soure?
Looking back at the graph, cycles 4 through 7 exhibit a steady decrease of occurrences in global errors for the use of L1 after negative feedback because learners responded better to explicit output-promoting strategies.
It is critical to note here is that the current literature in Classroom Research already knows that uptake is more likely to occur when learners self-repair following explicit prompts in face-to-face settings (Nassaji & Kartchava, 2018). In this study, it showed to be also true in MALL.
To explain better, the fact that mobile communication is asynchronous, and interaction is deprived from body language, did not seem to interfere in the benefits of output-promoting strategies. This demonstrates that this type of feedback strategy is likely to succeed regardless of on-time intervention and learner attention might not necessarily rely on eye-contact or other elements of face-to-face interaction as previously suggested by some scholars (Breuch & Racine, 2000; Hernández Méndez et al., 2012; Mendez et al., 2010; Yao, 2001).
This subsection has discussed that global errors caused by the use of L1 were a result of participants’ attempt to either complete their ideas or need to fill in silence gaps in their turns.
Noticing correction was a major challenge for error treatment here. After more explicit negative feedback strategies were applied, participants started to avoid using their L1 in English
utterances.
125
If applying more explicit negative feedback was an important decision to treat errors caused by the use of L1, this raises a question as for how other types of error responded to that shift in corrective strategy. The following is a discussion on how oral negative feedback affected lexical errors.
Lexical Errors
Another frequent type of error in treatment cycles was lexical. This can be demonstrated in the samples below.
Excerpt 9 from treatment cycle 2
Utterance in independent practice:
P1: I go sleep in noon.
Excerpt 10 from treatment cycle 3
Utterance in independent practice:
P5: My brothers do soccer in the night.
In the excerpts above, P1 meant that she goes to sleep at midnight while P5 meant that his brothers play soccer at night. I should note that these excerpts also contain grammatical errors in the use of preposition – “in noon” instead of “at noon” and “in the night” instead of “at night”.
However, I consider those grammatical errors local errors since they would not hinder
communication alone. The misuse of “noon” instead of “midnight” and “do soccer” instead of
“play soccer” affected communication, therefore, deserved intervention.
A better understanding of the presence of global lexical errors during treatment cycles is displayed in the graph below. It displays the average number of times this type of error occurred in the group before and after corrective feedback was provided.
126 Figure 7. Lexical Errors
According to the graph, there was an observed reduction of occurrences of lexical errors after correction at every cycle, except for cycle 1 where the average number remained the same.
This finding, while preliminary, suggests that negative feedback did not have any impact on L2 speech development at first. However, further investigation is needed to understand why lexical global errors started to decrease at treatment cycle 2 and continued to reduce in the following cycles. The chart below demonstrates the reduction of occurrences in global lexical errors throughout the seven treatment cycles.
6
5
7
6
5
8
6 6
4,25
5,25
4,25
3,75
4,75
3,75
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Treatment cycle
Treatment cycle
Treatment cycle
Treatment cycle
Treatment cycle
Treatment cycle
Treatment cycle
Occurrences of Global Errors