Negotiation of Form, Recasts, and Explicit Correction in Relation to Error Types and Learner Repair in Immersion Classrooms

Abstract

This article presents a study of the relationships among error types, feedback types, and immediate learner repair in 4 French immersion classrooms at the elementary level. The database is drawn from transcripts of audio‐recordings of 13 French language arts lessons and 14 subject‐matter lessons totaling 18.3 hours and including 921 error sequences. Wecoded the 921 learner errors initiating each sequence as grammatical, lexical, or phonological, or as unsolicited uses of L1 (English) and corrective feedback moves as negotiation of form (i.e., elicitation, metalinguistic clues, clarification requests, or repetition of error), recasts, or explicit correction. Findings indicate that lexical errors favoured the negotiation of form; grammatical and phonological errors invited recasts, but with differential effects in terms of learner repair. Overall, the negotiation of form proved more effective at leading to immediate repair than did recasts or explicit correction, particularly for lexical and grammatical errors, but not for phonological errors. Phonological repairs resulted primarily from recasts.