Classroom Provision of Corrective Feedback Revisited

The shift of priority in current second language teaching to boost the use of the target language for communication, the conception of error as natural product of language development that can be self-eliminated with the increase of the amount of exposure to the target language, and the existing problems with feedback provision as observed in the daily classroom practice have jointly given way to a tendency to undervalue the provision of corrective feedback in adult second language classroom. To say that adult second language acquisition bears a direct dependence on error correction seems to be oblivious of the reality, yet the usefulness of the provision of corrective feedback can hardly be denied. Viewing second language acquisition as cognitive skill acquisition and taking a hypothesis-testing stance, the present paper reinstates the facilitative role of corrective feedback in adult SLA, particularly in classroom learning. In respect of the actual provision of corrective feedback in the classroom , it argues for teacher-adaptation and emphasizes developing learners' error detection