Following the presentation of error types and CF types, it is now time to move on to another important aspect of a CF episode, the uptake moves. The student’s utterance immediately following the teacher’s CF was coded as an uptake. According to Lyster and Ranta’s (1997) uptake taxonomy, a student’s modified output could either be a successful
repair of the erroneous utterance, or an utterance that still needs-repair, and there are
different types within these two categories. The different types of repair were: a repetition of the teacher’s feedback, an incorporation of the teacher’s utterance into a longer one, a
self-repair when the student corrects himself, or a peer-repair. On the contrary, the
different types of needs-repair were: an acknowledgment of the teacher’s feedback, same
error, different error, an off target utterance that avoids the teacher’s linguistic focus, a hesitation, or a partial repair. These identifications were applied to the current sample,
therefore as per the presentation of previous elements of the CF episode, examples from the oral data are provided for each type of uptake below.
To begin with the category of repair, Example 16 demonstrates a student’s repetition of a teacher’s CF which included the corrected form.
Example 16 (B1+ Proficiency level):
S: … and do something for theirselves (error: grammatical) T: for themselves (CF: recast ~ reformulation)
S: for themselves (uptake: repetition)
Concerning the pattern of error coding in relation to repetition, when a student's uptake contained a repetition of the linguistic focus of the teacher's feedback, irrespective of
additional errors, the student's uptake was coded as a repetition. However, the uptake containing the additional error which was coded as a repetition, was also coded within a separate episode as the trigger, namely the error type in the separate episode, followed naturally by a CF type and an optional uptake.
Incorporation referred to a student’s repetition of a teacher’s corrected form, which was
incorporated into a longer utterance as indicated in Example 17. Example 17 (B1+ Proficiency level):
S: and also they believe that they will be more socializing with people (error: lexical) T: they'll be more more sociable (CF: recast ~ reformulation)
S: sociable with people when smoking (uptake: incorporation)
Self-repair occurred when the student who made an error, self-corrected, in response to a
teacher’s CF that did not provide the correct form. This is presented in Example 18. Example 18 (B1 Proficiency level):
S: container (error: lexical)
T: it's 40 grams (CF: metalinguistic feedback) S: oh the weight (uptake: self-repair)
Peer-repair occurred when in response to a teacher’s CF following a student’s error, the
corrected form came from a different student. In Example 19, following the teacher’s CF in response to a student’s error, another student was able to provide the correct form. Example 19 (B1 Proficiency level):
S: I will get Tom looked the dog while we are away (error: grammatical)
T: έτσι λέει ο κανόνας; [is that what the rule says?](CF: metalinguistic feedback in L1 ~ prompt)
Moving on to the category of needs-repair, one of the six types was acknowledgment. This uptake type generally referred to a student’s ‘yes’ that was taken to mean ‘yes that is what I meant to say’, as it was likely to be the case in Example 20, or to a student’s ‘yes’ or ‘no’ following a teacher’s metalinguistic feedback.
Example 20 (B2 Proficiency level):
S: as teacher to learn the students (error: lexical) T: to teach them (CF: recast ~ reformulation) S: yes (uptake: acknowledgment)
Same error included a repetition of a student’s initial error. As indicated in Example 21,
Student 1 repeated the same type of error after the teacher’s CF. Example 21 (B1 Proficiency level):
S1: one thousand nine eight
T: πως είπαμε οτι χωρίζουμε τις ημερομηνίες; [how did we say that we split the dates?] (CF: metalinguistic in L1 ~ prompt)
S1: one thousand (uptake: same error)
T: οι σε δύο μέρη [no in two parts] (CF: metalinguistic in L1 ~ prompt) S2: nineteen eighty-seven (uptake: peer-repair)
Contrary to Example 21, different error occurred when a student did not correct or repeat an initial error, but produced a new one. As illustrated in Example 22, the student initially produced a phonological error, and then, a different phonological error.
Example 22 (B1 Proficiency level):
S: low fat milk /'jʌgʌrt/ (error: phonological) T: /ˈjɒɡərt/ (CF: recast)
S: and /hʊl/ (uptake: different error)
T: /həʊl/ wheat bread ψωμί ολικής αλέσεως [whole wheat bread] (CF: recast with L1) ~ reformulation)
T topic continuation - so in order to reduce stress… (no uptake)
There was also the case when a student appeared uncertain of what to respond to a teacher’s feedback, and this was coded as a hesitation. Example 23 suggests uncertainty on behalf of the student.
Example 23 (B1 Proficiency level):
S...because we want the planet umm ψάχνω τη λέξη διοξείδιο του άνθρακα [I'm looking for the word carbon dioxide] (error: unsolicited use of L1)
T: that’s a different word carbon dioxide (CF: explicit correction) S: because we want to (pause) (uptake: hesitation)
T: reduce
Lastly, partial repair referred to uptake that contained partial correction of the initial error, as illustrated in Example 24.
Example 24 (B1 Proficiency level): T: found (error: grammatical)
S: past? Past? Αόριστος [past simple] (CF: metalinguistic feedback) T: ed (uptake: partial repair)
At this point it is important to note that I also broke down the needs-repair category into
modified output and unmodified output, based on students’ efforts to modify their
erroneous utterances. Following Swain (1995), I considered modified output as any type of uptake in which students attempted to modify their initial non-target utterances. Hence, as Table 3.6 shows, I coded as modified output the uptake types which were non-target- like but encompassed students’ efforts to modify their erroneous utterances: different error and partial error. Accordingly, I coded as unmodified output, the uptake types which did not incorporate students’ efforts to modify their initial non-target forms: acknowledgment, hesitation, off target, and same error. The focus of this breakdown was
on the students’ efforts to alternate their original erroneous forms, regardless of the fact that their turns were incorrect.
Repair Modified output Unmodified output
self-repair different error acknowledgment
incorporation partial error hesitation
repetition - off target
- - same error
Table 3. 6: Uptake types classified as repair, and needs-repair: modified, and unmodified
In this section, I described how the audio-recorded interaction data were firstly transformed into a written document via selective transcription, and then, the transcribed data were manually coded. In the next section, I illustrate how the codes were ‘extracted’ from their environment: the CF episode, in order to be used in a process of quantitative analysis which involved the operation of statistical techniques (Friedman, 2012).