Students are often encouraged to proofread their writing by reading it aloud. Presumably, this will allow writers to correct local errors. Yet even though this strategy may be effective for native speakers, there is little empirical evidence of its benefit among second language writers. Therefore, we wondered how many errors second language…

This paper reviews the literature on the role of corrective feedback and instruction in L2 pragmatics. Pragmatics "focuses on how people perform, interpret, and respond to language functions in a social context" (Taguchi, 2011, p.289), and therefore its development is key to the development of language competence. Pragmatics entails both…

The practice of Corrective Feedback (CF), which is situated within a Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Paradigm, is currently positioned towards an accuracy-orientated delivery based on native speaker norms. This is despite the recognition in different areas of linguistic research that there is considerable variation in the way that English is…

With a considerable emphasis on the role of feedback in L2 writing, the effectiveness of written corrective feedback (WCF) has been investigated extensively over the past 25 years. Conflicting findings have been reported regarding the efficacy of WCF in developing learners' written accuracy. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of research on…

This article takes a meta-analytic approach to investigate the efficacy of written corrective feedback in second language (L2) writing instruction. With its widespread practice in second language acquisition (SLA), written corrective feedback has increasingly garnered attention as much as it has continued to be a subject of considerable…

Second and foreign language teachers often say that they correct students' oral errors "naturally" in their classes. In fact, the operationalization of incidental oral corrective feedback also states that it arises "naturally" in a communicative task. This notion was confirmed in a study that I conducted with four ESL teachers…

Despite suggestions being a common speech act used by writing center tutors, very limited research is available on the use of suggestions in online writing center practice. Drawing upon multiple sources of data including the chat transcript, screen recording of the session, and final revised version of the writer's text, this case study explores…

Recent research in English as a second language (ESL) contexts has shown pronunciation teaching to be undervalued and often overlooked both in published textbooks and teachers' classroom practice, despite growing research evidence for the efficacy of appropriately structured pronunciation teaching. The current study extends research on this topic…

Noticing is the necessary attention that learners give to language in order to learn (Schmidt, 2001). Self-correction is evidence of noticing and a tool for language learning. Previous research has suggested that speakers focus on meaning during speech production, and language learners likely need an opportunity post-production to correct…

Errors naturally appear in spontaneous speeches and conversations. Particularly in a second or foreign language, it is only natural that mistakes happen as a part of the learning process. After an inappropriate expression is detected, it can be corrected. This act of correcting can be initiated either by the speaker (non-native speaker) or the…

Teacher corrective feedback is widely recognised as integral in supporting developing L2 writers. The potentially high pressure IELTS test preparation classroom presents a context where feedback has not yet been extensively studied. Consequently, teachers' approaches to corrective feedback on Writing Task 2, the essay component of IELTS Writing,…

There are a number of studies on teachers' corrective feedback and students' uptakes in immersion settings, but the majority is carried out in the North American context. Based on limited data, "the counter­-balance hypothesis" was proposed by Lyster and Mori (2006) to explain distributions of teacher feedback and students' uptakes in…

It has been debated whether teachers should treat students' grammatical errors in second language writing instruction (Truscott, 1996, 1999, 2010; Ferris, 1999, 2004, 2010). Several meta-analyses have investigated correction effects (e.g. Russell & Spada, 2006; Truscott, 2007). Their findings, however, have been conflicting. A recent trend to…

Repair strategies are the ways in which students resolve conversational problems in speaking, hearing and understanding. While there is a plethora of research on college and adult students' repair strategies usage, limited research has been done on the repair strategies usage of elementary school students, more specifically, English as a Second…

For various reasons, second language learners modify their speech by means of self-repair. This study, based on a small-scale corpus, shows the patterns and features of self-repairs by intermediate Chinese learners of English. The results suggest that intermediate Chinese learners of English more frequently make repairs than advanced Chinese…