ELT Voices India

December 2013 | Volume 3, Issue 6

The Role of Corrective

Feedback in Learners
Phonological Uptake across
Gender
SAMIRA IRAJI , MASOUD ZOGHI & AMIR NEMAT-TABRIZI
1

ABSTRACT
A major concern for most EFL researchers is to find appropriate ways for the
improvement of learners language attainment in EFL contexts. To this end, they focus
on learners as well as teachers to find suitable methods and create better conditions to
enhance the learning. For the past decades, classroom talks and teacher-learner
interactions have received serious attention. The current study was an attempt to
examine the role of male and female teachers in the provision of corrective feedback
that leads to male and female learners phonological uptake. All teachers-learners
moves in the error correction sequences were identified and transcribed from audiorecordings of 32 hours of instruction from 8 classes with 8 qualified instructors. The
researchers also used an interview to obtain fully reliable data. The result based on the
chi-square analysis shows that there is a significant relationship between teachers
corrective feedback and learners uptake. Therefore female teacher used more
corrective feedback moves in their classrooms but uptake happened more for male
learners.
Keywords: corrective feedback, phonological uptake, gender

1.
2.

Department of ELT, Ahar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahar, Iran

Department of ELT, Ahar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahar, Iran

3. Department of ELT, Tabriz Branch, PNU, tabriz, Iran

1|ELT Voices India International Journal|ISSN 2230-9136 (Print) 2321-7170 (Online)

ELT Voices India

December 2013 | Volume 3, Issue 6
1. Introduction
During the previous century, under the influence of behaviorism, errors were considered as bad habits and
consequently it was argued that they should be corrected promptly in order to prevent their re-occurrence. But
with the emergence of generative grammarians in 1957, Chomsky (1959) criticized behaviorism and demonstrated
that behaviorists are unable to explain human experiences such as creativity. Seen in this way, students errors
were not corrected immediately; in fact, it was felt that they should be formulated, tested, hypothesized, and
revised based on the received feedback.
Among scholars who investigate the role of interaction, frequent mention is made of Hatch (1978) who focused
narrowly on the significant role of input as well as interaction. She claimed that studying the role of input is
necessary but not enough in L2 research studies. Hatch (1978) claimed that we need to consider the corpus as a
whole and look at the interactions within conversations. She also contended that it is possible to learn a second
language through interaction because by means of interaction language functions are evolved. According to
Allwright (1984), interaction is a complex idea, not because it can create learning opportunities, but because it
comprises learning itself.
Long (1981, 1983, 1996) continued Hatchs studies and became well-known by introducing his interaction
hypothesis. The hypothesis proposes when L2 learners interact with each other or with native speakers, they try to
use a series of interactional techniques and adjustments to make the communication comprehensible and to
negotiate the meaning (Schmitt, 2002). However, for the successful development of L2, Long (1996)
acknowledged that negotiation of meaning is not sufficient; implicit negative feedback achieved during interaction
is necessary to lead L2 learners to the higher levels of performance. Gass (1997) believes that learning is likely to
take place during interaction, and negotiation can be the starting point for L2 acquisition.
Lyster and Renta (1997) continued studies on reactive and corrective feedback and learners uptake
immediate response to teachers corrective feedback which can incorporate six kinds of feedback. These
feedback types are: explicit correction, recasts, clarification request, metalinguistic clues (feedback), elicitation,
and repetition.
Two types of uptake were obtained from Lyster and Rentas research. In the first type (Type A), learners produce
utterances still needing repair after the teachers corrective feedback, and in the second type (Type B), students
produce utterances that do not need repair. According to Tedik and Gortari (1998), Type A uptake with repair
does not include self-initiated repair but rather those types of repairs that students produced in direct response to
the feedback provided by the teacher. Therefore, this can be considered as a confirmation check or a response
without enough knowledge of the L2 rules by the student. Teachers can seek to provide an exclusive plan to
take into account learners errors and give feedback to the errors made on linguistic elements like
vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar.
What provokes the most concern in this study is the significant role of teachers gender in the type of responses to
the learners phonological erroneous utterances since these specific responses, in turn, establish different kinds of
uptake that are learners reaction to their phonological erroneous utterance (Lyster & Renta, 1997).
In recent years, male or female instructors and their classroom management have been the research focus of many
of the gender-based investigations in the second or foreign language literature. As it is common in Iran, language

2|ELT Voices India International Journal|ISSN 2230-9136 (Print) 2321-7170 (Online)

ELT Voices India

December 2013 | Volume 3, Issue 6
teachers usually teach in single-gendered institutes and schools; males teach male EFL learners and females teach
female EFL learners. For this reason, it is not clear how similarly male and female teachers deal with EFL
learners erroneous utterances in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.
As is often pointed out, the role of gender is important in learning and teaching a second language. The study of
both female and male teachers in a comparative investigation of this kind can shed more light on how different or
similar they are in their approach to error correction. The current study attempted to bring into light the unknown
related to gender differences in the area of feedback and uptake. It is hoped that the finding of this study would be
a proper supplement for the existing body of research on the communicative-based practices.
It was also the aim of this study to investigate and compare the rate and the effectiveness of the learners
observable uptake following different types of feedback provided by the male and female teachers. It is hoped that
through this study, contributions would be made to a better understanding of corrective feedback given by male
and female teachers at the adult elementary level and that the results of this comparative study would provide EFL
teachers in general and Iranian EFL instructors in particular with a higher awareness of the role of feedback.
1.1. Research Questions and Hypotheses
The following research questions were formulated with the hypothesis predicting significance relationship among
variables.
Q1: Is there any significant difference between EFL teachers with different sex teaching male and female EFL
learners in terms of the rate and types of corrective feedback they provide in classroom interactions for
learners phonological errors at elementary level?
Q2: Is there any significant difference between EFL learners' uptake with different gender to their teachers'
corrective feedback for learners phonological errors?

Accordingly, the following hypotheses were formulated:

H1: There is a significant difference between male and female EFL teachers in terms of the rate and types of
corrective feedback they provide in classroom interactions for learners phonological errors.
H2: There is a significant difference between male and female EFL learners' uptake with regard to their teachers'
corrective feedback for learners phonological errors.
2. Method
2.1. Research Design
The present study was an attempt to identify the frequency of corrective feedback types that Iranian EFL teachers
used in response to the learners ill-formed utterances. These ill-formed utterances were categorized according to
the type of linguistic focus, i.e. phonological, grammatical, and lexical. Phonological errors are studied in this
research to highlighting the necessity of corrective feedback. To answer the research questions, a descriptive
design incorporating both quantitative and qualitative methods was employed. The data in these kinds of
investigations are samples of classroom interactions between teacher-learner that statistical procedures are used
for analyzing the data at the final step. The classes chosen for this study were from the elementary levels. They
were held 3 times a week. A typical semester includes 20 sessions. For this study only 4 sessions (4 hours per

3|ELT Voices India International Journal|ISSN 2230-9136 (Print) 2321-7170 (Online)

ELT Voices India

December 2013 | Volume 3, Issue 6
class) was chosen. Furthermore, observational data from the intact classes were obtained, and thus descriptive
procedures were utilized. The reason for selecting a descriptive procedure was that the whole observational data
were being collected from the intact classrooms. As Ellis, Busturkmen and Loewen (2001) pointed out, due to its
unpredictable nature, incidental focus on form cannot be categorized under the rubric of experimental methods.
2.2. Participants
2.2.1. Teachers
A total of 8 experienced EFL teachers, according to Gotbonton (2003) every teacher who has more than 3 years
experiences is experience one, (4 female and 4 male) teaching English for elementary EFL learners were chosen
from West-Land language Institute, Urmia, Iran. The whole number of sessions being observed was 4 out of the
total number of 20, amounting to 32 hours. The classes were taught by the teachers chosen randomly from the list
of classrooms that the board of management had prepared for the elementary level. Moreover, the teachers
enjoyed high academic degrees in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), with different genders to be
categorized as male and female teachers.
2.2.2. Learners
The learners were categorized into adult 50 female and 50 male learners. The first 4 female classes, being taught
by female teachers, incorporated 14 students (within the age range of 15-40), 12 students (within the age range of
16-22), 9 students (within the age range of 22-30), and 15 (within the age range of 18-25) respectively. The other
4 classes, being taught by male teachers, incorporated 15 students (within the age range of 19-42), 11 students
(within the age range of 15-24), 13 students (within the age range of 17-25), and 11 students (within the age range
of 14-22). The participants native language was Turkish who could also speak Farsi as well. It is worth
mentioning that their differences were only in their gender.
2.3. Instruments
2.3.1. Audio-recording
In each session, Interchange 1 course book by Richards et al. (2005) was used to teach elementary adult learners.
The classes were audio-recorded with a mini-sized mp3 voice recorder, placed between the teachers and the
learners to obtain audio-data from the whole class interactions, along with some field notes taken by the
researcher as a non-participant observer during the sessions.
2.3.2. Note taking
Note-taking was carried out by researcher to ensure more reliable data-gathering specially in observing learners
uptake which are at the result of teachers feedback.
2.3.3. Interview
To obtain fully reliable data, the researcher decided to use semi-structure interview from learners to get the
relationship between corrective feedback and learners uptake.
2.4. Procedures
The data comprised 32-hour audio-recording classroom talk accompanied by observational data of 8 EFL teachers
with 4 hours for each teacher. The 8 classes observed by the researcher were arranged by the supervisor of WestLand Language Institute based on the sex of the learners and the teachers. At first, the teachers in question were
not aware of the nature of the research because it was felt that their awareness would influence the results.

4|ELT Voices India International Journal|ISSN 2230-9136 (Print) 2321-7170 (Online)

ELT Voices India

December 2013 | Volume 3, Issue 6
However, after the recordings, teachers were informed about the research. While having audio-recorded the 8
female and male English language classes for 4 sessions, the researcher also observed them to determine the
moves.
Regarding the learners' uptake move, the researcher decided use introspective strategy (self-report) to determine
their real uptakes.
3. Data Analysis
Regarding the coding system, after listening closely to the recorded files, the researcher identified and transcribed
errors.
Phonological error
S: /notibook/
T: / notibook/? /notebook/ (clarification request+ recast)
After collection and transcription of the data, frequencies as well as percentages of feedback types and uptake
occurrences were calculated. The statistical data analysis utilized to analyze the obtained data of the present study
was Chi-square since a nonparametric statistic is used with frequency data in order to test the relationship between
variables (Mackey & Gass, 2005).
To investigate the significance differences between male and female teachers in terms of type and rate of
corrective feedback and learners uptake across their gender in elementary level, the researcher used chi-square
SPSS software for gathered data based on classroom observations.
As Table 3.1 indicates the total distribution of all reactive feedback types provided by two male and female
teacher groups teaching male and female learners phonological errors. It reflects the number of distributed
instances of feedback in order to tackle the first research question in this study that dealt with the possible
differences in the distribution of corrective feedback types by male learners teachers and female learners
teachers occurring in meaning-focused EFL classes.
Table3.1: Distribution of corrective feedback types by EFL teachers
CF

Recast

Clarification
request

Metalinguistic
feedback

Explicit
correction

Elicitation

Repetition

83
(17.1%)
198
(40.8%)

27
(5.6%)
31
(6.4%)

22
(4.5%)
69
(14.2%)

11
(2.3%)
38
(7.8%)

0
(0%)
0
(0%)

1
(0.2%)
5
(1%)

Teachers
Male teachers
Female teachers

Chi-Square Tests

Value

df

Asymp. Sig. (2sided)

5|ELT Voices India International Journal|ISSN 2230-9136 (Print) 2321-7170 (Online)

ELT Voices India

December 2013 | Volume 3, Issue 6
10.946a
10.513
1.602

Pearson Chi-Square
Likelihood Ratio
Linear-by-Linear
Association
N of Valid Cases

4
4
1

.027
.033
.206

485

The results of Chi-square analysis as it is also clear in Table 3.1, also indicated a statistically significant
difference: 2 = 10.946; df = 3; p < 0.05. Then the first hypothesis is supported at p-value less than 0.05. The
results of the chi-square analysis showed that there was a significant difference between EFL teachers teaching
male and female EFL learners in terms of the rate and types of corrective feedback they provided in classroom
interactions. Teacher's feedback for male learners was mostly in the form of recast (83) but for female learners it
was mostly in the form of recast and metalinguistic feedback (198 and 69 respectively).
Table3.2: male and female ELF learners teachers and linguistic focus of corrective feedback
Grammatical

Lexical

Phonological

18

21

105

(3.7%)

(4.3%)

(21.6%)

84

54

203

(17.3%)

(11.1%)

(41.9%)

Linguistic focus

Male teachers
Female teachers

The chi-square analysis shows that there is a significant difference between EFL teachers teaching male and
female EFL learners in terms of the linguistic focus of corrective feedback: 2= 10.047; df = 2; p < 0.007 . The
linguistic focus of the corrective feedback for male learners is mostly phonological (105) while for female learners
are grammatical and phonological (84 and 203 respectively).
Table3.3: Frequency of uptake moves following corrective feedback in general
Corrective feedback

Uptake

Male learners classes

144
(27.9%)

93
(19.17%)

Female learners classes

341
(70.3%)

81
(16.7%)

Of all 485 feedback moves provided by all of the teachers in response to learners errors, just 144(27.9%)
feedback moves provided by male learners teachers that from the total 93 (19.17%) lead to uptake of some kind

6|ELT Voices India International Journal|ISSN 2230-9136 (Print) 2321-7170 (Online)

ELT Voices India

December 2013 | Volume 3, Issue 6
on the part of the male learners.
As mentioned before, audio-recording may not fully reliable to retrieve audible episodes, the researcher decided to
use introspective strategy (self-report) to clearly determine their real uptakes. For this reason only about 60% of
uptake moves were identified by think-aloud process.
Table 3.4: Independent T-test for male and female learners
Value of T Statistics

4.66

Degree
freedom
58

of

Sig(2-tailed)

Mean difference

0.000

0.54

4. Results
This study made an attempt to get at the existence of any relation between male and female EFL teachers in the
characteristics and effectiveness of corrective focus on form. To sum up the results, corrective focus on form
seems influential in second language achievement since it creates opportunities for learners to shift attention from
meaning to focus on form in the context of communicative-oriented instruction. Also, it is not the same between
male and female teachers with different learners consisting male and female as the results show.
4.1. Discussion
Comparing the teachers teaching male and female learners and the use of corrective feedback, it can be stated that
the findings of this study seems to be more and less in line with the findings of Mackey (1999) who reported the
prevalent tendency of teachers to use recasts for adult learners and with the study done by zarie (2010) which was
based on questionnaire and explores more feedback moves in female teachers classes rather than male ones. The
current study highlighted that the frequency of corrective feedback by female learners teachers were more than
those of male learners teachers according to learners phonological ill-firmed utterances. Whereas uptake moves
in male learners classes were more than female learners classes. Therefore it was concluded that the types of
corrective feedback varied according to the sex of the learners. . For instance, whereas the female learners
teachers provided double proportion of recasts in comparison with male learners teachers, they were more likely
to provide corrective feedback to their female learners in the form of metalinguistic feedback. A similar study to
Lochtmans (2003) yielding comparable results was conducted by Tsang (2004) who studied the correlation
between corrective feedback and learner uptake in an analysis of 18 English lessons in Hong Kong secondary
classrooms. Of the 945 minutes lessons that were transcribed and examined, Tsang (2004) found that the teachers
preferred recasts like Lyster and Rentas study (1997) with 48% (N = 84). Explicit correction and repetition both
received 14% (N = 24) of the total amount of feedback moves (N = 174). To investigate the correlation between
feedback types and learner uptake, Tsang (2004) identified elicitation and repetitions as valuable instruments in
pushing learners to produce the highest rates of student-generated repairs (50% each) in comparisons with recasts
and explicit corrections that received no repairs from the learners. Panova and Lyster (2002) conducted a study on
corrective feedback and learner uptake. They focused on an adult ESL classroom with different backgrounds and
different age ranges in Montreal, Canada. Their teacher was an experienced female French/English bilingual, who
had 13 years of experience in teaching ESL to adults. Corrective feedback moves were categorized under seven

7|ELT Voices India International Journal|ISSN 2230-9136 (Print) 2321-7170 (Online)

ELT Voices India

December 2013 | Volume 3, Issue 6
different terms: recasts, elicitation, metalinguistic feedback, repetition, translation, clarification request, and
explicit correction. Panova and Lyster identified 412 moves during interactions in the classrooms that out of these
total, recasts were the most frequently used feedback move with 55% (N = 226), and a good second was
translations with 22% (N = 91). Panova and Lyster concluded that the teachers used recasts more frequently due
to the low proficiency level of the students. In other words, the students were incapable of correcting their own
errors, and thus the teacher had to correct their errors and give the correct answer on most occasions.
5. Conclusion
Over the past decades, a rapidly growing interest in the area of focus on form in general and reactive focus on
form in particular among scholars has been expanded. However, there are more to be studied in this field since
there is still limited evidence that reactive focus on form has been viewed on its different angles. The first
question pertained to the distribution of the total number of feedback moves provided by the teacher participants
teaching male and female EFL learners in communicative-based environment. Quantitatively, the findings
indicated that recasts were the most common type of feedback provided by teachers (both sex) in classes.
Teachers used metalinguistic feedback in addition to recasts for female learners. These findings therefore, lead to
the acceptance of the first hypothesis that there is significant difference between male and females teachers and
their use of corrective feedback types. This particular finding confirms the studies carried out in an ESL setting by
Lyster and Renta (1997) that like this study, teachers in their research used more recasts for elementary level .The
research question number 2 addressed the learners observable uptake and its relationship with corrective
feedback in general. As the results of Chi-square data analysis reported the uptake happened more for male
learners classes regardless of teachers sex. In this study both recasts and clarification request in females classes
and recasts in males classes lead to higher and successful uptake across learners phonological errors.
5.1. Pedagogical Implications of the Study
The findings of the current study include a number of implications for learning as well as EFL teaching,
particularly in the case of reactive focus on form and its characteristics in L2 learning and teaching .Also
highlighted the use of more corrective feedback moves in elementary classes to clarify and identify problems and
errors to better understanding and uptake. The results also may be useful for syllabus designers to put courses
include more topics which lead to classroom interactions which Couse feedbacks in classes. Since the recordings
of the lessons were conducted and mitigated with the presence of the observer, it may be assumed that the
observations reflected a general and clear view of the classes atmospheres and learners and teachers
interactional patterns in the classrooms.
5.2. Suggestions for Further Research
What may be a fruitful area of further research in this field could be applying fixed camera or pan and scan
technique by the researcher to gain information about the process of data collection, enabling the researcher to
evaluate her own true estimation. However, it is also suggestible to pursue studies that cover and examine the
extent of teachers awareness of their use of corrective feedback during meaning-focused activities. It is
recommended that in future researchers try to examine the stability of findings over a long period (e.g., multiple
years of academic performance) and in different subjects in ESP classes. A research realm based on reactive focus
on form including the ability to expand meaningful comparison among curricula would be broad and holistic. Not

8|ELT Voices India International Journal|ISSN 2230-9136 (Print) 2321-7170 (Online)

ELT Voices India

December 2013 | Volume 3, Issue 6
only is speaking ability, but other skills of academic achievement, like listening, writing, and reading also would
be more generable to investigate how teachers apply focus on form techniques to correct.
References
Allwright, R. L. (1984). What do we want teaching materials for? ELT Journal, 36 (1), 5-19.
Chomsky, N. (1959). Review of verbal behavior by B.F. Skinner. Language 35, 26-58.
Ellis, R., Basturkmen, H., & Loewen, S. (2001). Learner uptake in communicative ESL
lessons. Language Learning, 51(2), 281-318.
Gatbonton, E. (1999). Investigating experienced ESL teachers pedagogical knowledge.
Modern Language Journal, 83(1), 3550.
Gass, S. M. (1997). Input, Interaction, and the Second Language Learner. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Hatch, E. (1978). Acquisition of syntax in a second language. In J. Richards (Ed.),
Understanding second and foreign language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Long, M. H. (1981). Input, interaction and second language acquisition, in H. Winitz (Ed.),
Native Language and Foreign Language Acquisition (pp. 259-78). New York, Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences, Series No. 379.
Long, M. H. (1983). Native speaker/non-native speaker conversation and the negotiation of
comprehensible input. Applied Linguistics, 4, 126-141.
Long, M. H. (1996). The role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition. In C. Ritchie, T. K.
Bhatia (Eds.), Handbook of language acquisition, vol. 2. Second Language Acquisition (pp. 413-468).
New York: Academic press.
Lochtman, K. (2003). Oral corrective feedback in the foreign language classroom: How it affects interaction in
analytic foreign language teaching. International Journal of Educational Research, 37, 271283.
Lyster, R. (1998). Negotiation of form, recasts, and explicit correction in relation to error
types and learner repair in immersion classrooms. Language Learning, 48, 183-218.
Mackey, A., & Gass, S. (2005). Second language research: Methodology and design.
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc, Publishers.
Panova, I., & Lyster, R. (2002). Patterns of corrective feedback and uptake in an adult ESL
classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 36, 573-95.
Richards, J. C., Hull, J., & Proctor, P. (2005). Interchange. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schmitt, N. (Ed.). (2002). An introduction to applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tedick, D. J, & Gortari, B. D. (1998). The Bridge: From Research to Practice, research on error correction and
implications for classroom teaching. ACIE Newsletter, 1, 3.
Zarei.N. (2010).The Relationship between Gender and Corrective Feedback .ICT for
Language learning, 4th edition.

9|ELT Voices India International Journal|ISSN 2230-9136 (Print) 2321-7170 (Online)