Abstract

This laboratory-based research investigated how 40 university EFL learners responded to their peers’ linguistic errors and made their moment-to-moment decisions of whether or not to provide corrective feedback (CF) to their peers’ errors in task-based peer interaction. Data from the transcripts of videotaped pair interaction and audio-taped stimulated recall interviews were utilized and analysed to report the findings. Results showed that learners did not provide CF to their partners frequently and of the three CF strategies, they favoured recast over prompts and explicit correction. Furthermore, more morphosyntactic errors than lexical and phonological errors were provided CF. More importantly, results revealed that learners’ CF decision-making was mediated by six categories of factors: provider-related factors (e.g. providers’ lack of knowledge), receiver-related factors (e.g. receivers’ showing signs of seeking help), task-related factors (e.g. the time of story happening), error-related factors (e.g. salience of errors), and interpersonal factors (e.g. peer relationship). Implications are discussed especially regarding the important role of teachers in raising learners’ language awareness in peer interaction.

摘要

这项基于实验室的研究调查了40名大学EFL学习者如何应对同龄人的语言错误，并做出了当下即刻的决定，即在基于任务的同龄人互动中是否为同龄人的错误提供纠正反馈（CF）。利用录像带对互动记录和录音带刺激的回忆访谈的笔录数据进行分析，以报告调查结果。结果表明，学习者不经常向其合作伙伴提供CF，并且在这三种CF策略中，他们倾向于重铸而不是提示和明确的改正。此外，CF提供了比词法和语音错误更多的形态句法错误。更重要的是，结果表明，学习者的CF决策是由六类因素介导的：与提供者相关的因素（例如，提供者缺乏知识），与接收者相关的因素（例如，接收者显示寻求帮助的迹象），与任务相关的因素（例如故事发生的时间），与错误相关的因素（例如错误的严重性）和人际关系因素（例如同伴关系）。尤其讨论了有关教师在同伴互动中提高学习者语言意识方面的重要作用。