Negative Feedback as a Facilitative Device for the Acquisition of English Questions by Chinese College Students: An Interactional Perspective

Abstract

This research, based on Pienemann’s “Developmental Stage of English Question”, immerses English questions learning in negative feedback interaction and focuses on the effect of English questions development with different types of negative feedback. We conduct two experiments and attempt to re-evaluate the effectiveness of negative feedback and observe their different impacts. Our research concerns (1) Do learners who receive negative feedback in a communicative context prompt their performance to higher stages of question development than learners who do not receive? (2) Do learners who receive negative feedback progress to a higher level of question development than learners who do not?(3) Is it more effective to provide explicit negative feedback, recast, and modified output during English questions learning? After analyzing longitudinal data, we find that (1) feedback in interaction can assist students to move from lower stage to higher stage but cannot help them construct complicated questions; (2) explicit negative feedback proves to be more effective than other feedback types and we also analyze theoretically their underlying reasons. Our research supports, with empirical study, that “Focus on Form-Function” is effective in English questions learning.