TÉCNICA DE INSERCIÓN:

151 out of 210 errors received feedback, which means that 71.90% of all er- rors were addressed. Some errors were treated with multiple feedback moves, which is why there were 160 feedback moves altogether. The majority of these feedback moves were dedicated to lexical (44.36%) and content (41.88%) er- rors. In contrast, only 6.88% of all feedback moves were dedicated to gram- matical errors. A closer look at the three individual classes reveals that 75% of all errors were treated in Class A, 57.14% of all errors in Class B and 95.23% of all errors received treatment in Class C.

An analysis of the percentage of errors treated per error type reveals that every content error was corrected in all three classrooms, occasionally even with multiple feedback moves. These took place when the teacher was not completely satisfied with the student’s uptake after the feedback move; in other words, multiple feedback moves took place when the uptake still ‘needed repair’.

(43) S3: It is wrong to ever split an infinitive. Um, to ever split... T: Would be splitting, yes, what do you think?

S3: I think I wouldn’t even say that sentence in an informal context. T: Aha, well basically splitting the infinitive has been one of the no- nos of academic writing. Today I really feel this is not relevant anymore. This is really something one hardly ever looks at any- more. (...)

The above example illustrates such a multiple feedback move. The stu- dent was asked to judge the sentence ‘It is wrong to ever split an infinitive’ and to explain when splitting an infinitive can be more or less accepted. The student hesitates and the teacher encourages her to find an answer through elicitation. However, the teacher is not completely satisfied with the student’s answer and therefore provides explicit feedback.

Lexical errors were the second most treated error type in each class (92%, 78.78% and 100% in Class A, B and C respectively). The reason lexical errors received so much treatment is attributable to the focus of the course: one of its aims was to improve vocabulary. Treatment of lexical errors then, is in line with previous research which has pointed out, that errors pertaining to the pedagogical focus should be corrected (Hendrickson 1978; Chaudron 1988). In fact, the only times lexical errors were not corrected, was when the focus was not on vocabulary, but rather on free discussions.

(44) S3: Wouldn’t it actually be the other way around nowadays, because, no, not nowadays actually always, because females are stressed too, maybe even more, because they have to work more to earn the same amount of money like men, for the same work, get much more loan payments.

T: Hmm, I like where this discussion is going. [laughs]

(45) S: The last one is the summary of the graph. It just made a summary, just made it short the whole part. I mean the graph is about this, and the key features and just yeah.

In contrast, grammatical errors were not treated as frequently, though the amount of treatment varied depending on the class (24% in Class A, 3.33% in Class B and 66.66% in Class C, though the percentage in Class C needs to be interpreted with caution, as only six grammatical errors occurred in total). Because one cannot argue that the course does not aim to improve the gram- mar of the students, and that errors were therefore not treated, there must be an alternative explanation for this finding. As already noted in the pre- vious section, grammatical errors mostly took place during free discussions, in which the focus was on meaning and not on form, or during explanations concerning English knowledge, in which case the focus was on content. There- fore, the teachers probably opted not to interrupt the student by providing corrective feedback.

This is in line with previous research which has argued that more errors should be tolerated during communicative activities (Hendrickson 1978). In fact the grammatical errors that did receive treatment, were part of the ped- agogical focus at the moment they occurred. The following two examples illustrate this: both extracts are from the same lesson, both student utter- ances contain grammatical (tense) errors, however, in one instance the errors are ignored because the teacher’s focus is on content, while in the other in- stance they are corrected, because the tense that should be used for a graph description is relevant to the class.

(46) T: So what’s... So yes well, what about the test. Say the person has tested the car and is just coming back which question would you usually ask? [‘Are you buying that car?’ or ‘Are you going to buy that car?’]

S: I feel like after the test drive I would ask are you buying that car? Because the person already feeled the car, I mean touched it, and get to know it.

(47) S: Almost a third of the readers had smoked at that time.

T: Tense problem here, what about the ‘had smoked’ ? That past perfect tense would actually relate to something that happened before the past, or even earlier than a past event. So what could we say? Hm?

In addition, grave errors were always corrected.

(48) S: I would say Tumoko spends more on study materials than she spends on clothes.

T: Good, so you could just change the two proportions around. Or you could say she spends...

S2: [Fewer. S: [Less.

T: No, who said fewer?! Ss: Less.

T: Less, remember countable, uncountable, she spends less on clothes than she does on study materials.

Overall, the amount of feedback provided in all three classes is only slightly higher than the amount found in Jimenez’s (2006) study (71.90% vs 67.1%) and much higher than in an ESL study conducted by Lyster and Panova (2002), which found that corrective feedback only took place 48% of the time. Furthermore, studies have pointed out that more corrections take place in beginner classrooms. However, the reason for the high amount of feedback in this study is due to the fact that this course’s major emphasis is on form. In regard to the the amount of treatment per error type, Jimenez (2006) also found lexical and content errors to be treated most often. Chaudron (1977) had also found that content and lexical errors generally receive more treatment than grammatical and phonological ones.