\nGunma Prefectural Women\u2019s University, Japan
\n<kamiya
![\"atmark\"](\"http:\/\/www.tesl-ej.org\/atmark.png\")
fic.gpwu.ac.jp><\/p>\nAbstract<\/h3>\n
Second and foreign language teachers often say that they correct students\u2019 oral errors naturally<\/em> in their classes. In fact, the operationalization of incidental oral corrective feedback also states that it arises naturally<\/em> in a communicative task. This notion was confirmed in a study that I conducted with four ESL teachers in the U.S, three of whom mentioned natural<\/em> use of oral corrective feedback concerning their teaching practices. However, through analyzing their interviews and stimulated recall data further, it was found that their definition of the term natural<\/em> was not uniform, but threefold: oral corrective feedback was natural<\/em> to them because (a) it is what people do in daily conversations, (b) it is done automatically and unconsciously, and (c) it is a part of the job as a teacher. This implies that, when investigating beliefs among language teachers, scholars need to further examine how each teacher defines the word in their use of oral corrective feedback because using the umbrella term of natural<\/em> may conceal the fact that the meaning of the word may differ for each teacher.<\/p>\n While I was working on a project that investigated the relationship between stated beliefs and classroom practices of oral corrective feedback (CF) among four ESL teachers, I noticed that, in their transcriptions, three teachers used the term natural<\/em> in reference to their own use of CF without explaining what they meant. Although several terminologies exist for Focus on Form (e.g., Kamiya, 2018), a related concept with CF, they are made for the sake of research from the etic perspective, and thus, natural<\/em> was not one of them. This made me realize that it was difficult to pinpoint what they intended when using the word, so I decided it was necessary to clarify the meaning that they assigned to the word by using multiple data sources.<\/p>\n With the intention and hope of the further development of the interlanguage of the learners, CF can provide second and foreign language (L2) learners with potentially beneficial negative evidence (and often together with positive evidence) concerning the target language. The degree of its use varies greatly for each teacher for a number of reasons, and those who are reluctant may simply prefer to ignore errors in the classroom. Still, CF is commonly practiced by the majority of L2 teachers across various teaching contexts (e.g., Sheen, 2004), and it is said that CF \u201carises naturally<\/em> out of the performance of a communicative task\u201d (Basturkmen, Loewen, & Ellis, 2004, p. 244; my italics henceforth).<\/p>\n The word natural<\/em> is commonly used by both researchers and teachers when describing practices and cognitions of L2 teachers\u2019 use of CF. For example, referring to recasts<\/em>, defined as the teacher\u2019s reformulation of the learner\u2019s errors while retaining their meaning, Mackey, Polio, and McDonough (2004) stated, \u201c[a teacher] found it more natural<\/em> to provide the correct form for students (i.e., recast) \u2026\u201d (pp. 318-319). Also, a teacher in the study by V\u00e1squez and Harvey (2010) commented, \u201c[m]ost teachers use recasts because this form of error correction comes so naturally<\/em> to most of us\u201d (p. 434).<\/p>\n Despite such commonplace usage of the term, there seems to be a lack of a clear explanation as to what is actually meant when researchers or teachers use it in association with CF. For instance, in Loewen (2012)\u2019s review of the CF literature, the word natural<\/em> appears four times, twice in the subheadings (\u201cDoes feedback occur naturally<\/em> in the L2 classroom?\u201d (p. 25) and \u201cWhat are the characteristics of naturally<\/em>-occurring feedback?\u201d (p. 25)) and twice in the text (\u201cDescriptive studies of naturally<\/em>-occurring feedback in L2 classrooms \u2026\u201d (p. 25) and \u201cConsiderable research has investigated the amount and types of feedback in naturally<\/em>-occurring classrooms \u2026\u201d (p. 30)). Also, Gass, Behney, and Plonsky (2013) state \u201c[f]eedback occurs naturally<\/em> and in classrooms\u201d (p. 361); however, none of these articles provided the operationalization of the term.<\/p>\n There seems to be an assumption that what constitutes natural<\/em> regarding CF is so commonplace that a tacit understanding exists for all (S. Loewen, personal communication, June 11, 2014) and thus, when it is discussed, it is referred to in an offhanded manner. Perhaps this assumption that natural<\/em> must be understood instinctively is one of the reasons it is not even discussed in the literature. Indeed, upon the consulting of several recent reference works (Loewen & Reinders, 2011; Richards & Schmidt, 2010; Robinson, 2013), literature review chapters and articles (Loewen, 2011; Lyster, Saito, & Sato, 2013) as well as scholarly books (Ellis, 2008; Ortega, 2009), all of which discuss some aspect of CF, but the word natural<\/em> neither appears nor is explained. As such, there is clearly a case to be made to clarify what L2 researchers and teachers mean when they refer to natural<\/em> use of CF. Otherwise, upon investigating beliefs of L2 teachers, researchers must tackle the data in lack of a system refined enough to enable them to precisely code teachers\u2019 recount of CF, wrongly assuming that the meaning of natural<\/em> as regards their use of CF is the one that the researchers hold. The current paper hopefully contributes to revealing multiple meanings assigned to the word, which then can be applied broadly in the studies of teachers\u2019 cognition on CF.<\/p>\n The three teachers who participated in the present study were all native speakers of English, and were working for an intensive English program in a U.S. university. Cecile was in her twenties, working for the program as a teaching assistant (TA) and concurrently studying TESOL as a first-year MA student. Although she was a TA, she alone had the full responsibilities for her classes. She had worked as an English teacher in Korea for two years before coming to the program. The only teacher education program that she had attended was a two-week orientation that took place before the teaching job overseas, and because her undergraduate major was literature, she was relatively inexperienced regarding classroom research and practices. John and Jim both had a MA in TESOL degree with a practicum and were working full-time for the program as highly-trained experienced teachers of English. John was in his thirties and had taught for 14 years (11 years in the US and three years overseas) in total. Jim was in his fifties and had taught for 30 years (12 years in the US and 18 years overseas) in total. All the names are pseudonyms.<\/p>\n The data were collected through three classroom observations (50 minutes for each), which were video and audio recorded, and two interviews and two stimulated recalls (1 hour for each), which were audio recorded, yielding 6.5 hours of data for each teacher in total. All of the data were transcribed by the researcher and later proofread by native speakers of English while listening to the audio files. Although the primary focus below is on the interview and stimulated recall data, brief descriptions of the classroom interactions are added to clarify what occurred prior to the face-to-face discourses.<\/p>\n The classroom data were analyzed quantitatively in order to count the number of errors by the students and the provisions of CF given by the teachers. An error was defined as an utterance made by a student that contained a morphosyntactically, phonologically, or lexically non-standard expression or a wrong word choice. CF was defined as a teacher\u2019s corrective move directly following a student\u2019s error regardless of the teacher\u2019s intention to correct the error. All of the errors and instances of CF were analyzed linguistically without considering any non-verbal behavior.<\/p>\n The taxonomy of CF in Sheen (2004) was used for coding. The complete list had seven categories; however, only those three shown here appear in this paper:<\/p>\n The data from the interviews and the stimulated recalls were analyzed through content analysis<\/em> in order to investigate how each teacher had defined the word natural<\/em> concerning their CF practices. A second rater, who was a graduate student in applied linguistics coded 20% of the data. The interrater reliabilities are shown in Table 1. All of the discrepancies were discussed and resolved in a follow-up meeting between the second rater and the researcher.<\/p>\n Table 1. Interrater Reliabilities<\/strong><\/p>\nIntroduction<\/h3>\n
Literature Review<\/h3>\n
Methodology<\/h3>\n
Setting and Participants<\/h4>\n
Procedure<\/h4>\n
Analysis<\/h4>\n
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