The Role of Task in the Efficacy of Corrective Feedback

This chapter addresses the question of how classroom tasks can be a conduit for corrective feedback (CF) to second language learners. To explore this, we acknowledge both the theoretical issues in second language acquisition (SLA) research about the place of negative evidence and also the practical issues in identifying where, when, and by whom learner errors are best treated. We start with a definition of the word task itself, to set it apart from other pedagogic activities commonly used in language classrooms. We then move to why a task-rich and meaning-focused classroom is argued to provide better opportunities for SLA than a form-focused one. We consider the theoretical underpinnings of Long’s Interaction Hypothesis (1983, 1996) and how this meshes with an important feature of classroom tasks: that they provide the learner with a platform for interacting with other learners or with a teacher, and through interaction to be guided implicitly and incidentally to noticing shortcomings in their L2 knowledge. A role for CF in such an environment is not obvious, especially in interactions between learners, and in reviewing research studies into the place of tasks in CF research, and the place of CF in task research, we note the two perspectives seem seldom to intersect. The final sections of this chapter address task design and implementation factors that seek to create space for CF without compromising the essentially meaning-focused nature of task interaction. These include the affordances of computer-mediated interaction and task implementation sequences in which CF is delayed till the post-task stage, or fed-forward at the pre-task stage.