Critical Review of Literature on Giving Corrective Feedback in Tesol Sessions

Abstract

Giving corrective feedback in classes has widely been discussed in Second Language Acquisition focusing on the requirement of the feedback and the types of feedback based on the time and the purpose of providing them. The relevant literature has identified six types of feedback: explicit correction, recast, clarification request, metalinguistic feedback, elicitation and repetition. These are categorized mainly into two groups: explicit feedback and implicit feedback. It is believed that both types have their own advantages and disadvantages. This paper first highlights the difference between explicit and implicit feedback prior to critically evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of both taking the research finding into account. The discussion of explicit and implicit feedback as corrective feedback methods still leaves questions with the classification of feedback types as 'explicit` and 'implicit`. The discussion of research findings indicates that explicit feedback has an edge over the implicit feedback based on the benefits that they bring to second language learners. SLA theories also support the effectiveness of explicit feedback over implicit feedback. The empirical studies highlight that metalinguistic feedback is more useful than implicit methods such as recasts.