1.Introduction

Early studies show that corrective feedback plays an important role in second language (SL) or foreign language (FL) classrooms. In Second Language Acquisition (SLA), we need to know how to learn an unfamiliar language while simultaneously being forced to communicate in that language correctly. In classroom settings, noticing can be facilitated by input features that have been contrived for instructional purposes through “input enhancement” [2]. The Chinese students are good at comprehensive input but long so good at writing and speaking. Under this situation, students need some feedback from either our second language teacher or other students. According to the existing literature, we can see that corrective feedback is necessary in improving L2 learner’s’ writing abilities[3].

Corrective feedback is teachers’ massage in order to correct or enhance students’ utterances [4]. We can see corrective feedback includes all actions but not only correction of the mistakes. In Chaudron (1998)’s opinion, treatment of error is only the corrective action, but this kind of feedback has little influence or needs more effort to put right. This definition seems to be narrow. So Lightbown and Spada (1999) add that corrective feedback is all the indications of the mistakes that students had made in the targeted language. It should be something attractive but not only a tedious correction. Researchers have not yet reached a consensus on the divination of corrective feedback. But we already know its features. It is produced by teachers. It is oral information and it can be either explicit or implicit.

According to Lyster and Ranta (1997), corrective feedback can mainly be divided into six parts: explicit feedback, recast, clarification, metalinguistic correction, elicit action and reputation. Because clarification, metalinguistic correction, elicit action and reputation are all emphasized on indication of the self-correction by students. We can clarify these four sub-categories as one “prompt”. When the teacher supplies the correct form and clearly indicates what the students had said incorrectly, we say it explicit feedback. Alternatively, when the teacher does not give enough information about the mistake, we call it implicit feedback. Recast is when the teacher implicitly reformulates all or part of the student’s utterance. Metalinguistic clues are that the teacher provides comments or questions related to the wellformedness. Classification requests that the teacher uses phrases following learner errors to indicate to students that their utterance is ill-formed in some way and that a reformulation is required. Reputation refers to the teacher’s repetition of the student’s ill-formed utterance. Elicitation is when the teacher directly elicited a reformulation from the student by asking questions. For examples, when the student said “ There is foxes.” Explicit feedback would be “ There is something wrong with the word ‘is’, we should use the plural form ‘are’. Recast would be “Are.” or “There are foxes.” Metalinguistic clues would be “Single form? Or plural form.” Classification request would be “Pardon?” or “I don’t understand.” Reputation would be “There is foxes?”. Elicitation would be “ Once upon a time, there…?

Within the broad domains of focus on the importance of corrective feedback in language output, which means speaking and writing. Han (2015) studied that corrective feedback can improve grammatical accuracy when learning L2 writing. Corrective feedback can also improve oral English in L2 learning but the effect of it could be influenced by contextual factors and individual learning differences (Li 2010; Lyster & Saito, 2010).

2.Methodology

2.1.Literature Search

In searching for the literature, the author first searched the CNKI database with the keywords ‘corrective feedback’, ‘second/foreign language learning’,’ instructed settings’, ‘teacher and student interaction’, ‘language skills’ and ‘ultimate achievement’. Secondly, a Google Scholar search for “bilingualism” and ‘cognitive’ should be performed for any articles that CNKI might have missed. Finally, the author combed through the reference sections of the articles obtained to find any additional studies.

Zhao(2009) did a series of experiments to examine whether there is a relationship between corrective feedback of teachers and the uptake of learners and how it works. Thirty-four lessons including 16 and 18 respectively took 10 weeks to work this result out. The efficiency of corrective feedback is first related to the degree of correction, that is to say, whether the mistake was corrected or not, what degree of the correction of the mistake. The efficiency was then correlated to the degree of recognition, that is to say, whether the students attach importance to the mistake and correction. Moreover, it is in connection with how students react to the mistake. In other words, whether the students had corrected the mistakes due to self-correction or with the help of their teachers had remained the mistakes in mind for a long time. Also, the teacher’ s action to the mistake plays an important part in the study. If a teacher can provide corrective feedback at an appropriate time In an appropriate way, it will help the students a lot in second language acquisition.

For example, Xu (2012) have an investigation on the corrective feedback in Chinese EFL classrooms. It has an analysis of how teacher’s corrective feedback strategies and error types have influenced students’ process of second language acquisition. The observational study chose four classes in different universities with different levels of English competence. The research had identified 5 types of errors: lexical error, phonological error, syntactical error, discourse error and unsolicited use of L1. The analysis shows that teachers should do some implicit input- providing feedback rather than the other feedback types for it is the most frequently and most efficient one.

Zhai and Gao (2018) studied the effect of corrective feedback on speaking complicity and accuracy based on the context of Chinese students. The study shows that corrective feedback is the core part in the efficiency and accuracy of second language acquisition. Based on the situation that Chinese students are afraid of speaking English, corrective feedback plays an essential part in the process of L2 speaking learning. The data shows that after be corrected by CF, their utterance becomes more accurate. Moreover, the research had bridged the gap that few research focuses on the effects of CF on complicity on spoken English.

3.Inclusion & Exclusion Criteria

All the relevant studies found (see below) have been conducted in the past 10 years. And they were publicly available, either online or in library archives. The language used in these studies is English.

3.1.Participants

The work was carried out in China. Participants from other countries are excluded. The criterion of participants was foreign language or second language learners based in the context of China. So bilingual speakers are excluded. All participants were from local universities of China and learn English as their foreign or second language. All learners have normal language development. Individuals with learning disabilities/hearing impairments or other cognitive disabilities were excluded.

Studies selected must involve feedback types. These include implicit feedback and explicit feedback. The latter can be further divided into recast, prompts, metalinguistic clues, clarification requests, repetition and elicitation.

A total of 52 studies were obtained from the search procedure. The research is based on the context of China and focuses on the effects of CF on effectiveness and efficacy, so some of the studies that do not meet the selection criteria are excluded from the analysis. After excluding those, there were 10 studies left. Also, the publication time and the rational degree about the study project would be taken into consideration. The author reviewed the titles, abstracts, and keywords of these papers for possible inclusion by applying the selection criteria stated above. Only 4 papers met all inclusion criteria and data from these articles were extracted and analysed.

Table 1: A summary of the selected studies.

4.Summary of Research Findings

According to the research related to corrective feedback, we can see that CF plays a more and more important role in second language acquisition. In most of the studies, CF can improve the students’ speed or efficiency when learning a second language.

Moreover, different types of feedback may have different impacts and also different difficulties in different situations. Zhai and Gao’s experiment (2018) involved 24 participants, who were all in their undergraduate year and consider English as their second language. They finally found out that the clarification task is the most effective one in promoting the easy speaking process. By contrast, metalinguistic feedback can largely improve the behavior of students in complex speaking tasks. Clarification is one kind of explicit feedback. In the process of simple verbal task, students are more likely to stay focused so that clarification request can catch their attention easily. After noticing that hint, they can do the interactive communication with their teachers/peers. Metalinguistic feedback, at the same time, shares the same sense with clarification to some extent. Metalinguistic feedback focuses more on the metalinguistic correction so that it is much clearer than any other type of feedback, which can help participants intake efficiently. However, some implicit feedback such as recast, repetition and confirmation check has a negative influence, for the implicit feedback may cut in the teaching and break the flow of conversation but cannot give a clear rectification. The easier the speaking task is , the more effective direct feedback will be. In speaking task of a complex version, metalinguistic feedback has the most positive effect among all 5 kinds of feedback due to its explicit character. Also, the “Trade-Off Hypothesis” set out that there is an inevitable dilemma between content and language in EFL because of the limitation of learners’ capability, while metalinguistic feedback can solve this problem perfectly. This is also why implicit feedback isn’t work in this situation: students don’t have enough attention to analyzing which part is wrong and how to correct it. This phenomenon is rather troublesome in complicating speaking task.

Xv (2012) pointed out that explicit feedback is more effective at eliciting uptake that implicit feedback due to a series of control experiments. The study has engaged 4 complete classes of foreign language school and universities in Nanjing, which provide comprehensive classes to students. Result dedicated that implicit input-providing move is the most frequently used by teachers and explicit input-providing moves are the least. However the study also showed that as The feedback moved on, the uptake of learners would become relatively low. The article analyzed the reason maybe because teachers are so eager of the correction that they don’t give enough time for students to intake and improve,so that feedback cannot make effect. On the other hand, students’ feeling towards the correction is taken into consideration. Teachers are keen on do the corrections more comfortably and easier to be accepted in order to prevent students confidence and interests. Moreover, the more difficult teaching task is, the more teacher tend to cooperate with modeling techniques, which makes feedback frequency rate lower. Besides of oral feedback, nonverbal signals can also help correct the fault. This kind of feedback is usually used by teachers. Nonverbal feedback is a category of feedback that teachers use gestures such as movement of their head or hand of expression on their face rather than speaking to do the corrective actions. This is always useful because as a explicit feedback, it can give signals to students directly and promptly. When knowing the fault, the students are provoked to self-correction on the scene.

Han & Kang (2015) have studied whether written corrective feedback can improve the students’ grammar accuracy of second language writing. They have carried out 22 studies In order to avoid students’ random error. After calculating and analyzing a series of data on the improvement of students, written grammatical accuracy. The research focus on 3 main questions: first is whether corrective feedback is effective in the development of L2 learners’ written accuracy. However, the data shows that the effect of CF is slight, this result is in accordance with Truscott‘s report (2007). The second question is which one is more effective corrective feedback, the direct one or the indirect one. The analysis did not classify the two very clearly. the reason of that maybe because besides the two types of corrective feedback, the improvement of students may also be influenced by many inevitable factors. Or put it in other way, the promotion of grammar accuracy is not due to a single factor. The third question is what corrective feedback influence the overall effects in written errors. They found that the most obvious improvement is the proficiency. They also found that the corrective feedback is not alway have a positive effect: when correcting the beginners, it may do harm to the process of study. So the author suggest we should be more caution when taking a similar experiment. There are also some other factors: when CF is given for journal writing, the effect she could be lower that the one provided in other situations. This is because the journal writing is not used for expression, it is a totally stress- free process so that the error is always be overlooked.Then they put forward that a more effective method affecting written behavior for the second language acquisition is that not keen to revise and edit their writing (Hedgcock & Lefkowtz,1994).

5.Discussion and Conclusion

According to the studies reviewed above, we can draw a conclusion that corrective feedback is an available and efficient method in the process of second language learning and is universally used in L2 learning classroom. What’s more, in different learning situations, the feedback type should always be different.

When students learn a second language which is totally different from their first language, they may not be aware of the mistakes they made and the correct way of communication. In such a case, corrective feedback is rather important to solve such certain basic requirements. For example, if you speak something wrong in either grammar or vocabulary, you may not notice it but the listener would get the wrong meaning. In such a case, CF can remind you the faults so that you can correct it promptly. For the same reason the CF is important in SLA. Consequently, the learner can give a positive reaction to L2 learning and bear the mistakes and correction in mind.

Corrective feedback can be classified into many sub-types, each of which may have slight distinctions in different circumstance. On the basis of international feedback types and teacher-student interaction (Lyster,2002), feedback Moves can be classified into 3 types: explicit correction, recast and prompts, the later two are implicit correction. Their functions may be different in terms of different situations. It has been found that in simple conversation, explicit feedback may be more efficient. In complex conversation, the implicit, especially metalinguistic feedback will be more helpful. There are also other researchers mention metalinguistic clues, clarification requests, repetition and elicitation as other types of corrective feedback. Each type has difference with each other. It depends on many factors, such as the language level students, the character of students, the willing of teachers and also the situation of the class.

As the research shows that as a beginner, it is more useful to use explicit feedback. However, if students is more advanced, metalinguistic feedback will be more efficient. For that explicit feedback has an advantage of promptness and intuition. So that student can notice the fault and simultaneously know the right expression in a very short time. This may give a connection between the right verse that is what the expression ought to be and the student’s mind. But for those who have already developed a good understanding of their L2, it is not necessary to for that connection. What is more important for them is to perfect their own language system. Metalinguistic feedback can point out not only the fault, but also the loopholes of their grammar system. Moreover, we can also see from the research that the character of students should also be taken into consideration. If the student is so shy, then teacher should use implicit feedback to protect the student’s feeling and confidence. This cannot be ignored because if CF is not in a correct way, it may have a negative influence on student. Besides, what teachers tend to use, what students get used to are important factors to decide which type of corrective feedback should be utilized in FL classroom settings.

After all these analyses, it can be concluded that teachers should incorporate corrective feedback into the classroom, and under different situations, the types of CF should be changed in order to guarantee the best uptake of the learners. Since Chinese belongs to Sino -Tibetan language family, while English belongs to the Indo - European language group, they are two totally different languages. Teachers should be aware of this typological distinction and take the difference into consideration. Feedback is more useful in output of students’ study, such as speaking and writing, because it can amend the shortcomings expressed by students.