Types of oral feedback: reason behind the choices

This descriptive study investigates the types of interactional feedback used in an English lesson in a normal Malaysian classroom. The focus is on how many different types of oral feedback, implicit and explicit, are provided and the reasons for choosing a particular type of feedback to use in a context in classroom teaching. The participant is an English language teacher in a secondary school in Batu Gajah. Thirty-two 15-year-old intermediate English proficiency students whom she teaches were part of the study. Transcripts of 5 videotaped classroom observations, 2 semi-structured interviews and remarks from field notes were used to analyse. The findings of the research show the teacher has used five types: repetition, elicitation, recast, reformulation, and explicit correction, during the duration of the five observations. In addition, the interviews and field notes have shown that the teacher has chosen diverse types at different junctures for reasons such as persuasion, immediate correction of form and meaning, saving time, confirmation of an answer, and prompting for answers. The nature of feedback puts forth several implications and considerations to different groups of people while they are within the educational setting. Each group would use the feedback in ways useful to the group