La influencia del componente no verbal asociado al feedback correctivo en la producción oral en ELE

Abstract

From a pedagogical perspective, the study of feedback has become a field of research in order to describe teacher's talk and understand whether it facilitates learner's uptake and second language acquisition. However, nonverbal language accompanying teacher's feedback has been underresearched. Traditionally, studies of corrective feedback analyse audio-recorded samples and almost exclusively verbal utterances. The present study investigated teacher's nonverbal behaviour associated with oral corrective feedback during four interaction-based activities that took place in a Spanish as a foreign language classroom at a university in the Netherlands. Exploratory data analysis was conducted in order to determine (a) the distribution of corrective feedback and nonverbal behaviour associated with this feedback, (b) nonverbal behaviour types and their distribution in relation to corrective feedback, and (c) the distribution of uptake and the relationship between nonverbal behaviour and the amount of successful uptake. According to the results obtained, 68% of oral corrective feedback was accompanied by nonverbal language, making corrective feedback more salient and, therefore, contributing to a greater amount of uptake. Elicitation was the most frequent technique and associated mostly with nonverbal cues, which were both used by the teacher depending on factors such as teacher's intention, instructional context and error type.