American International Journal of Social Science

Corrective Feedback in Primary EFL Classrooms in Turkey
Yasemin Kırkgöz, Muzaffer Pınar Babanoğlu, Reyhan Ağçam

Abstract
Corrective feedback is any reaction of the teacher which clearly transforms, disapprovingly refers to, or demands improvement of the learner utterance (Chaudron, 1977). According to Lightbrown & Spada (1999), it is an indication to the learners that his or her use of the target language is incorrect. Due to its applications in second/ foreign language classrooms, it has received increasing attention from scholars who conduct research on second language instruction. This study investigates CF types used in primary classrooms in Turkey, where English is taught as a foreign language and a compulsory part of the national curriculum. 36 teachers working with students of various grades in 20 state primary schools in Turkey participated in the study. Throughout a semester, EFL classes assigned to these teachers were video-recorded and transcribed to investigate what types of corrective feedback were mostly used by teachers in response to learners’ spoken errors and which leaded to most uptakes in the learners at stake. The study has indicated that all types of corrective feedback were used by the teachers to help students overcome errors they made in classes of various grades and that explicit correction was the most and peer correction was the least frequently used CF types in all four grades. As for student uptake, clarification request, elicitation, metalinguistic feedback and paralinguistic feedback proved the most successful CF types whereas explicit correction resulted in relatively less self-repair in the cases it was employed. The study is intended to offer evaluation of findings and to conclude with a few pedagogical implications in accordance with these findings.

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