
Baburhan Uzum
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, USA |

Bedrettin Yazan
University of Maryland
College Park, MD, USA |
Recently, many studies have emphasized the significance of
interaction in second language acquisition. Several studies have
investigated cognitive variables such as working memory, attention,
inhibition, and noticing (Gass, 1997; Mackey, Adams, Stafford, &
Winke, 2010); many others focused on the social aspect of learning
(Firth & Wagner, 1997; Lave & Wegner, 1991). After all,
learning takes place with the coparticipation of all agents involved. In
a recent study, Ellis and Sheen (2006) invited more research on
sociopscyhological factors that may influence learners’ receptivity to
corrective feedback. Motivation, in our point of view, is a good
candidate for such research because it can influence learners’
receptivity to teachers’ correction and direct their attentional
resources.
PROBLEMS OF CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK IN THE CLASSROOM
Teachers traditionally situate corrective feedback episodes in a
meaningful context. Though this is effective for the purposes of
communicative teaching, it conflicts with grammar teaching purposes.
These types of interactions are laid out in
initiation‒response‒follow-up sequences. Teachers provide the correction
at the followup section where learners expect a comment on the content
of their response. Students, however, may not expect a comment on form
and might fail to see this correction. Philp (2003) argued that with
recasts, the most common type of feedback used in language classrooms
(Leeman, 2003), learners may not notice the gap between their utterance
and the correction because of learners’ limited cognitive capacities.
When learners’ attentional resources are engaged in the meaning, they
may not notice the mismatch between their interlanguage and language
provided in the corrective feedback.
MOTIVATION
Learners’ motivation in learning L2 is dictated by their
interest in the culture (intrinsic motivation) and the advantages
associated with the knowledge of a particular language (extrinsic
motivation) (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Gardner,
1985). The theoretical framework of the present study
was informed by Deci and Ryan’s self-determination
hypothesis. The researchers offered a continuum to
explain learners’ motivation in three categories:
(a) amotivation (learners are not motivated to act)
(b) extrinsic motivation (learners want to learn languages due
to the advantages associated with such knowledge)
(c) intrinsic motivation (learners enjoy the language-learning process)
THE STUDY
This study was carried out at the English Language Center of a
Midwestern university. We investigated how learners
(N = 13) with different types of motivation (high
intrinsic/low intrinsic) responded to teachers’ corrective feedback.
First, a motivation questionnaire (Noels, Pelletier, Clement, &
Vallerand, 2000) was administered to explore learners’ motivational
orientations. Because learners were all aware of the advantages of
English language knowledge, they were considered somewhat extrinsically
motivated. Therefore, we used their intrinsic motivation scores as a
discriminating variable. We hypothesized that (a) learners with high
intrinsic motivation will concentrate more on their errors to learn the
correct forms and (b) learners with low intrinsic motivation may not be
enthusiastic during the interaction and thus may not pay attention to
teacher’s correction because of limited access to their attentional
resources. Therefore, learners with high cognitive abilities might not
use their actual potential because some psychological factors, such as
objectives and reasons to learn, have not yet been fulfilled. We
attempted to answer the research question: What is the relationship
between the type/level of learners’ motivation and the uptake they
produce?
METHOD
The questionnaire was designed by Noels et al. (2000) and
included seven factors: amotivation, external regulation, introjected
regulation, identified regulation, knowledge, accomplishment, and
stimulation. After the students were grouped,the
classes were video-recorded for analyzing student-teacher interactions.
Learners’ responses following corrective feedback were coded and
analyzed.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The analysis of the questionnaire yielded two different groups
(a) low intrinsic motivation (LIM) and (b) high intrinsic motivation
(HIM). The mean scores are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Mean scores for each category
Participants |
N |
Knowledge |
Accomplish |
Stimulation |
LIM |
6 |
12.1 |
11.6 |
11.8 |
HIM |
7 |
16.2 |
17.7 |
18.5 |
Our first hypothesis that HIM learners will be more attuned to
corrective feedback was not confirmed. Learners in the HIM group seemed
responsive to semantic corrections through reformulations but not to
form-focused ones. In the following excerpt with a HIM student, the
teacher might be trying to clarify the meaning of the learner’s response
and giving a recast to the tense error in the same turn. Because this
is an overlapping correction where syntax and semantics are addressed at
once, the student attends only to the semantic correction. The content
is prioritized and the morpho-syntactic correction remains
unanalyzed.
Excerpt 1 from a HIM student (after a quiz on a story)
1 Teacher: Mark, I watched you. You had many answers right. Why
do you think you didn’t get a good grade on the quiz?
(Initiation)
2 Student: Maybe I misunderstand (Response)
3 Teacher: Misunderstood the questions? (Clarification request)
4 Student: yeah (uptake)
5 Teacher: okay (teacher turns away) (Redirection)
6 Student: Oh no, the chapter! (Revised uptake)
7 The chapter? Okay, we’ll see now. (Follow up)
In the following excerpt, an HIM student fails to see the
teacher’s correction on form and meaning, and seems to perceive
teacher’s turn as an attempt to hear or understand the content of the
previous turn. Student displays confidence and certainty in her response
through falling intonation.
Excerpt 2 from a HIM student (grammar exercise)
1 Teacher: Catherine what does TY have? (question)
2 Student: When. (response with falling intonation)
3 Teacher: When or then? (question with rising intonation)
4 Student: When. (response with falling intonation)
5 Teacher: When I went to the supermarket to buy souvenirs.
Well, it’s not perfect is it? Because there is a period there, so what’s
better than when? (metalinguistic explanation with question)
6 Other students: Then. (response with falling intonation)
LIM learners did not show such attunement to either semantic or
form corrections. Instead, they seemed to treat teacher responses as
evaluation by an authority and accepted them as a default interaction
strategy. Therefore, teacher-student interactions with LIM students
unfolded in a less dialogic way than did those with HIM students. LIM
learners responded to semantic and form-focused corrections through
acknowledgments only.
Excerpt from an LIM student (talking about a short quiz)
1 Teacher: Why could he hide from the sun? Andy I saw your sentence, what did you say? (Initiation)
2 Student: He thought like the same landing. (Response)
3 Teacher: Okay. He could find somewhere to land. (Corrective feedback as follow up)
4 Student: [Nods] (Uptake)
5 Teacher: and do you want to add something Junk Yu? (Redirection)
CONCLUSION
The research findings indicate that the HIM group seemed to be
attuned to semantic corrections. Given that these interactions are
ideally naturalistic, the learners were concerned about conveying their
message but not necessarily in the perfect form. Their tendency to
continue the topic might be because of the intrusive nature of uptake in
a natural conversation. Therefore, the HIM group chose to prioritize
the successful maintenance of the interaction and to avoid any
interruptions in the flow of a conversation unless their meaning was
flawed. Because learners’ response after corrective feedback is believed
to be useful for learning (Mackey et al., 2010), topic continuation as
an alternative strategy, as displayed in this study, deserves further
attention. From a pedagogical perspective, teachers should have the
awareness that their questions and responses to students are perceived
within the principles of social interaction. Further studies could look
at the quality of corrective feedback and its interplay with other
psycholinguistic variables that might determine learners’ receptivity to
corrective feedback.
REFERENCES
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Instrinsic
motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York:
Plenum.
Ellis, R., & Sheen, Y. (2006). Reexamining the role of
recasts in second language acquisition. Studies in Second
Language Acquisition, 28, 575-600.
Firth, A., & Wagner, J. (1997). On discourse,
communication, and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. The Modern Language Journal, 81, 285-300.
Gardner, R. C. (1985). Social psychology and second
language learning: The role of attitudes and motivation.
London: Edward Arnold.
Gass, S. (1997). Input, interaction and the second language learner. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated
learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
Leeman, J. (2003). Recasts and second language development:
Beyond negative evidence. Studies in Second Language
Acquisition, 25, 37-63.
Mackey, A., Adams, R., Stafford, C., & Winke, P.
(2010). Exploring the relationship between modified output and working
memory capacity. Language Learning, 60(3), 501-533.
Noels, K. A., Pelletier, L. G., Clément, R., &
Vallerand, R. J. (2000). Why are you learning a second language?
Motivational orientations and self-determination theory. Language Learning, 50, 57-85.
Philp, J. (2003). Constraints on noticing the gap: Nonnative
speakers' noticing of recasts in NS-NNS interaction. Studies in
Second Language Acquisition, 25, 99-126.
Baburhan Uzum is currently a doctoral student in
second language studies at Michigan State University. His research
interests include second language acquisition, language socialization,
discourse analysis, and scholarship of teaching and
learning.
Bedrettin Yazan is a doctoral student and teaching
assistant in the Second Language Education and Culture program in the
Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Maryland,
College Park. He is currently teaching the course titled Pedagogy of
Teaching ELLs. |