International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies (Mar 2018)
The Effect of Corrective Feedback on Iranian EFL Learners' Spoken Repair Fluency and its Relationship with Spoken Complexity and Accuracy
Abstract
The aims of this study were to investigate the relationship among different spoken repair fluency indices including repetition, replacement, reformulation, and false start, the effect of corrective feedback (CF) on repetition, the presence of a trade-off among spoken complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF), and the likely effect of CF on it. In a quasi-experimental design, four pre-intermediate intact classes, with male Iranian EFL leaners, were randomly selected as the delayed explicit metalinguistic CF (n = 17), intensive recast (n = 15), extensive recast (n = 16), and control (n = 16) groups and participated in spoken reproduction of story tasks for six sessions, and, based on the presence or absence and type of CF, their errors were treated differently. The results of the correlational analysis indicated that there were significant correlations among all fluency indices and repetition, with the highest mean and highest correlation, was chosen as the representative index of the repair fluency. Additionally, the results of the one-way ANOVA indicated that the effects of different CF types on repetition were insignificant. Finally, the results of another correlational analysis indicated that the correlations among CAF were statistically insignificant and different CF conditions had insignificant effects on them. It can be suggested that different spoken repair fluency indices measure the same underlying construct and measuring one of them suffice. Furthermore, since CF has insignificant effects on spoken repair fluency and there is an insignificant trade-off among CAF and it is not significantly affected by CF, teaching practitioners should not be concerned about the negative consequences of the provision of CF to develop EFL learners' spoken accuracy.
