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The University of Queensland, Australia

This chapter reports on a study that investigated patterns of corrective feedback observed in teacher – student and student – student interaction in a task-based EFL class at a medium-sized university in China. Eight hours of classroom interaction data were analyzed for various types of feedback and uptake. Despite the large class size and the students’ unfamiliarity with a teaching methodology that is very different from the traditional Chinese way of learning and teaching the study found frequent interaction in the classroom characterized by teacher feedback to the students’ non-target-like utterances and students’ response to the feedback. These findings were interpreted in terms of characteristics of task-based interaction observed in the study, the principles or practices of TBLT in the context of the current study, and the factors affecting the classroom interaction. The main implication of this study is that active student participation was enhanced by the students’ willingness to accept new methodologies and modes of learning that are vastly different from their past learning experiences, from their beliefs about learning, and from the traditional methodologies they were accustomed to.

Introduction

In response to the initiative taken by the central government of China to revise the existing foreign language curriculum to a more communicatively oriented one, task-based language teaching (TBLT) has been introduced in many classrooms across the curriculum. Although teachers are aware of the need for the innovation, implementa-tion has not always been successful. For this reason, recent English Language Teaching research in China has mainly been concerned with the factors that hinder the imple-mentation of this new curriculum. However, little research to date has been under-taken in authentic settings to examine and identify the characteristics of actual classroom interaction that may ensure the successful implementation of TBLT and may also enhance L2 development. Within TBLT research generally, a substantial

 Noriko Iwashita and Huifang (Lydia) Li

volume of research has been devoted to corrective feedback episodes in teacher-stu-dent and stuteacher-stu-dent-stuteacher-stu-dent interaction, and some studies have found a facilitative role of certain types of feedback in SLA. Despite the large volume of research of this kind, to date little work has been undertaken in Chinese classrooms where the impact of fac-tors such as context, learner proficiency, and linguistic target on characteristics of in-teraction are in need of consideration (e.g., Ellis & Sheen, 2006; Oliver & Mackey, 2003; Sheen, 2004). Furthermore, although many studies on corrective feedback in classroom interaction were undertaken in TBLT-oriented classrooms, there is need for sustained attention to the characteristics of interaction associated with task-based in-struction. The current study sought to examine how task-based instruction may be facilitative of learning by identifying feedback episodes in teacher – student and stu-dent – stustu-dent interaction in an EFL classroom situation at a university in China.

Communicative, task-based language teaching in China

Over the past two decades, English language education in China has witnessed waves of top-down reforms promoting communicative, and more recently, task-based lan-guage teaching (Adamson & Morris, 1997; Hu, 2002b; Yu, 2001). Communicative tasks of various kinds have been presented as shaping opportunities for enhancing classroom communication. This can be seen in several widely used textbooks, such as Junior/Senior English for China published by the People’s Press and New College English published in 2008 by the Press of Shanghai Foreign Language Studies (Hu, 2002b; P. Li, 2009). These textbooks include a variety of meaning-focused tasks in the format of listening, speaking, reading, and/or writing activities (Hu, 2002b; P. Li, 2009).

Promoting communicative language teaching (CLT) through implementing TBLT has long been discussed in the literature in second language teaching and learning (e.g., Littlewood, 2007; Long, 1985; Nunan, 2004). The key concept of CLT, which has been widely accepted, is that the goal of teaching is to develop learners’ competence in real-life communication. However, interpretations of CLT have varied widely in terms of creating optimal conditions for developing learners’ communicative competence (Hiep, 2007). This is partly because CLT has included a broad range of methods and curricula that “embrace both the goals and the processes of classroom learning, for teaching practice that views competence in terms of social interaction and looks to further language acquisition research to account for its development” (Savignon, 1991, p. 263). TBLT is often regarded as a more thoroughly articulated, recent development within the overall approach of CLT (Littlewood, 2007; Nunan, 2004). Communicative tasks have been claimed to provide opportunities for learners to use the L2 to interpret, express, and negotiate meaning, and therefore constitute a major component of teach-ing methodology. Further, in TBLT, tasks can constitute syllabus units around which a course may be designed (Nunan, 2004).

Chapter 7. Patterns of corrective feedback in a task-based adult EFL classroom setting in China 

In spite of the efforts made to promote a communicatively oriented curriculum, the prevalent teaching and learning style in China remains teacher-centred and gram-mar-focused (Yu, 2001). This is clearly shown in the core intensive reading course taught in most secondary schools and colleges across the country (Cortazzi & Jin, 1996a). In this course, the teacher proceeds sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph in order to explain every likely grammar point or word meaning which may arise. Teachers who are familiar with Western notions of CLT may include some com-municative tasks which provide opportunities for negotiation of meaning, but this usually takes a very small portion of class time and is somewhat teacher-directed or teacher-centered (Jin & Cortazzi, 1998). For instance, two students stand in the front of the classroom and one asks the other questions while the rest of the class listens and is seldom engaged in spontaneous communication.

Despite the government’s strong advocacy of CLT, teachers have encountered a number of difficulties in the successful implementation of a communicative curricu-lum. For that reason, ELT research in China has focused primarily on investigating the factors hindering the successful implementation of CLT and/or TBLT in the classroom (Anderson, 1993; Hu, 2002a, 2005a; Liao, 2000; Littlewood, 2007; Yu, 2001). The fac-tors often cited in research and commentaries are large classes, public demand for as-sessment, the Chinese culture of teaching and learning, and teacher agency. According to Cortazzi and Jin (2001), for instance, class size in primary and high schools in China ranges from 20 to 80 students, with the average being 50 to 60. In a large class, class-room management is difficult too. For example, Ng and Tang (1997) reported on teachers’ complaints about management in a large class as follows: “We have 50 stu-dents in a class, and if each student speaks one sentence, it will take up the whole les-son” (p. 77). Similarly, C. Li (2003) identified a teacher’s frustration that students did not value group work without the teacher monitoring them and considered such work a waste of time.

The second factor is that China has a long history of public assessment, which can be traced back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD). In the modern society of China, several English tests, such as the National Matriculation English Test, the College Eng-lish Test and the Graduate School Entrance EngEng-lish Examination, play a key part in the pursuit of personal well-being and future employment opportunities. According to Cheng (2008), the high status of English tests does not support teaching but drives it.

Furthermore, Littlewood (2007) found that the public assessment system in East Asian countries usually fails to keep pace with curricular innovation. As has been pointed out by English teachers in China, the uniform test, which emphasizes grammar, vo-cabulary, and reading comprehension, can be an obstacle to the implementation of TBLT (Ng & Tang, 1997).

The third factor hindering the successful implementation of a communicatively oriented curriculum is the Chinese culture of teaching and learning. Teaching in China is often interpreted as a process of transmitting knowledge, information or skills from the teacher to the student. Correspondingly, knowledge is for the student to receive

 Noriko Iwashita and Huifang (Lydia) Li

and retain. Therefore, a good teacher is expected to possess a deep knowledge of the subject area and to be able to explain difficult points clearly to students, while a good student is expected to listen carefully to the teacher, take notes to review later, and memorize the knowledge transmitted by the teacher (Cortazzi & Jin, 1996b, 2001; Hu, 2002a; Rao, 1996). For instance, Hu (2002a) argues that the most serious problem hindering the implementation of TBLT may lie in the Chinese culture of learning that is based on deep-rooted perceptions of teaching and learning that clash with the tenets and practices of a communicatively oriented curriculum. That is, while Chinese cul-ture favours the epistemic mode of being mentally active in receiving knowledge, the interactive mode of being verbally active is the crucial part of a communication-based curriculum for English language teaching. Hu argues that, due to these fundamental differences, any pedagogical innovation that disturbs or threatens Chinese learners’

deep-rooted belief systems about learning will not help them learn effectively.

The last factor is teacher agency. In the early stages of rebuilding English language education at school, which began after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1977, the proficiency of English teachers was generally low. Due to the dire lack of English teach-ers, Russian teachers were recruited to teach English language after receiving in-ser-vice training that varied in length from several weeks to several months (Cowan, Light, Mathews, & Tucker, 1979). Over the years, the government has continued to put more effort into providing in-service training programs and revising the curriculum of teacher training courses at universities and teacher training institutions in order to improve teacher proficiency (Hu, 2005a). Although substantial progress has been made, teacher qualification remains a major concern in the promotion of pedagogical innovations such as TBLT. According to Hu (2005b), this is mainly attributed to the pre-service teacher education curriculum. Hu points out critically that theoretical lan-guage acquisition courses intended to improve teachers’ English proficiency take up the largest portion of curricular time. The method employed in the majority of these language acquisition courses is teacher-fronted and knowledge-based, which provides few opportunities for the student teachers to develop their communicative compe-tency. The teacher training program itself offers very few opportunities for the student teachers to explore pedagogical and psychological issues in a domain-specific manner.

For these multiple reasons, several commentators (e.g., Xiao, 1998; Yu, 2001) have expressed their concern that these student teachers will continue to apply in their fu-ture teaching the method with which they themselves were trained.

Task-based interaction in the classroom and SLA

A substantial amount of research has investigated task-based interaction in both class-room (observational) and laboratory (experimental) settings focusing on negotiation of meaning and more recently on corrective feedback. This research agenda is largely initiated by classroom researchers, who stress the importance of using tasks to enhance

Chapter 7. Patterns of corrective feedback in a task-based adult EFL classroom setting in China 

communication in the foreign language curriculum (e.g., Van den Branden et al., 2009;

Pica & Doughty, 1985; Pica et al., 1989). In perhaps the first serious claim along these lines, Long and Porter (1985) argued that task-based interaction observed in group work enhances language opportunities and improves the quality of students’ talk.

The theoretical foundation of most studies on interaction rests in Long’s (1981, 1983) Interaction Hypothesis. Long proposed that conversational interactions, which occur in a variety of forms as interlocutors respond to their conversational part-ner’s request for clarification or confirmation, promote L2 learning even though the immediate purpose of such modifications in conversation is to make speech compre-hensible. Based on the Interaction Hypothesis, a number of studies have examined which tasks are more likely to generate opportunities for the negotiation of meaning.

Pica, Kanagy, and Falodun (1993) classified tasks according to types of goals, and di-rections of communication. They claimed that closed two-way tasks provide the most opportunities for negotiation. In closed-two way tasks, information flows in two direc-tions as each participant is expected to share the information he/she has and there is only one outcome to complete the task, unlike in open tasks where participants are expected to interact with each other to obtain the necessary information or achieve the outcome. A further finding was that one-way tasks lead to more individual input and much less negotiation work than two-way tasks (Brown & Yule, 1983).

More recent studies on task-based interaction have focused on feedback moves arising within the interaction, observed between a teacher or NS and students, or be-tween students. The shift of the research focus was motivated by the increasing criti-cisms of Krashen’s Input Hypothesis that comprehensible input alone is not sufficient for SLA (e.g., Long, 1991; Swain, 1985). The attention to form needs to be incorporated into meaning-focused activity which is referred as focus on form. Focus on form oc-curs incidentally in meaning-focused interaction in form of various types of feedback (Long, 1991). This was further articulated in Long’s updated version of the Interaction Hyothesis. Long (1996) stressed the facilitative role of implicit negative feedback in conversational interaction as such feedback draws learners’ attention to mismatches between input and output.

Observational studies have examined instances of feedback (e.g., negotiation moves, explicit corrections) given by teachers in classroom interaction and many of the studies have also investigated learner response to the feedback. The findings of these studies show a high frequency of recasts given by teachers (e.g., Ellis, Basturkman

& Loewen, 2001, 2002; Lyster, 1998a, 1998b; Lyster & Mori, 2006; Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Panova & Lyster, 2002; Sheen, 2006; Wei, 2002).¹ However, in general, learner responses to recasts were found to be not as frequent as their responses to other con-versational moves, such as clarification requests.

1. Definitions and examples of different types of feedback are provided in the methodology section.

 Noriko Iwashita and Huifang (Lydia) Li

The teaching methodology employed in classrooms where these observational studies were conducted was communicative. A variety of communicative tasks, includ-ing information gap, jigsaw, discussion, were used based on the assumption that task-based conversation provides interaction. Although the recent studies above revealed characteristics of task-based interaction and the utility of various types of feedback for L2 development, compared with studies conducted in the 1980s and early 1990s the recent studies, while investigating opportunities for negotiated interaction, make little mention of tasks and task types. It appears that the recent studies have been under-taken with the underlying assumption that communicative tasks generate opportuni-ties for interaction in which various types of feedback are frequently provided.

Apart from the observational studies cited above, a number of factors which may affect the occurrence of feedback during task-based interaction have also been stud-ied: classroom vs. dyads (Oliver, 2000); EFL in Japan and immersion in Canada (Lyster

& Mori, 2006); French immersion program in Canada vs. a language school in New Zealand (NZ) vs. a large EFL classroom in Korea (Sheen, 2004); and learner factors such as teaching context, interactional focus (Oliver & Mackey, 2003) and linguistic target (e.g., Lyster, 1998a, 1998b). Sheen (2004) analysed the interaction in an EFL classroom in Korea and compared the results reported in previous studies (i.e., Loewen, 2005; Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Panova & Lyster, 2002) in four settings, that is, French im-mersion in the earlier study, ESL in Canada, ESL in New Zealand, and EFL in Korea.

The results showed that recasts were the most frequent feedback type in all of the four contexts, but significant variations among the four settings were observed. Interpret-ing the results, Sheen (2004) suggested that the influence of context (e.g., meanInterpret-ing- meaning-focused or form-meaning-focused, class size, course content) on corrective feedback and uptake should be considered. Additionally, though, it should be noted that Sheen does not mention how contextual variables in terms of use of tasks might have impacted on the nature of the interaction.

The study

In summary, TBLT has been introduced as a way of implementing CLT principles in many EFL classes in China, despite strong resistance from teachers. Also, because of the difficulties teachers face in implementing a more communicatively oriented approach, most existing research has been about identifying the issues that hinder suc-cessful curriculum innovation rather than evaluating the newly introduced curricu-lum. To date, little research is available documenting the classroom implementation or effectiveness of CLT/TBLT. Within TBLT research, one approach to investigating in-teraction is to examine various types of corrective feedback episodes in teacher-student and student-student interaction. Despite a substantial volume of related research in the field, few studies have been conducted in China. Nevertheless, recent research (e.g., Ellis

& Sheen, 2006; Sheen, 2004) has shown the importance of contextual variables in the

Chapter 7. Patterns of corrective feedback in a task-based adult EFL classroom setting in China 

investigation of the nature of classroom interaction. Hence the present study was un-dertaken to fill the gap in the research of teacher – student and student – student interaction in a Chinese EFL TBLT class. Based on these considerations, the following research question was addressed in this study: What are the patterns of corrective feed-back in teacher-student and student – student interactions in a TBLT university class setting in China?

Underpinning this research question is the fact that, despite a growing awareness of the need to enhance learners’ communicative competence among English language teachers in China, because of the difficulties teachers have encountered in implement-ing CLT/TBLT, interaction between teacher and students may not be frequent, even in a TBLT class. For that reason, the current study collected data from a TBLT classroom and examined the instances of corrective feedback and response to the feedback in order to establish whether and in what ways these teacher – student and student – student inter-action patterns were consistent with the basic tenets of TBLT. As such, the study was expected to provide empirical evidence of the challenges raised by the implementation of TBLT in China, and provide concrete suggestions on how to meet these challenges.

Methodology

Participants

Fifty students participated in this study. They were first-year students majoring in the English language. The participants had commenced university studies just before the data were collected. Their age ranged from 17 to 19 years old. The ratio of females to males was 4:1. The students had studied English for six years at middle school, where they had received a one-hour lesson every day and a one-hour reading lesson (during which students read aloud in order to practise pronunciation by memorizing words and reciting a text) two or three times a week. As Hu (2003, 2005b) explains, EFL teaching and learning in undeveloped regions² of China is more traditional in terms of curriculum and pedagogical practices. This was obviously the case for a majority of the students in the current study. Because they were from remote areas of the province where the university was located, they had benefited little from recent developments and innovations in English language teaching led by the government’s initiative in the middle school English curriculum. According to a substantial number of the students

Fifty students participated in this study. They were first-year students majoring in the English language. The participants had commenced university studies just before the data were collected. Their age ranged from 17 to 19 years old. The ratio of females to males was 4:1. The students had studied English for six years at middle school, where they had received a one-hour lesson every day and a one-hour reading lesson (during which students read aloud in order to practise pronunciation by memorizing words and reciting a text) two or three times a week. As Hu (2003, 2005b) explains, EFL teaching and learning in undeveloped regions² of China is more traditional in terms of curriculum and pedagogical practices. This was obviously the case for a majority of the students in the current study. Because they were from remote areas of the province where the university was located, they had benefited little from recent developments and innovations in English language teaching led by the government’s initiative in the middle school English curriculum. According to a substantial number of the students