Distinction between mediation and corrective feedback

The distinction between corrective feedback and mediation can be found in their definitions, underlying theoretical concepts, purposes, and practices. In a general sense, Hattie and Timperley (2007) define ‘feedback’ as information on a person’s performance or understanding that is given by an agent such as a teacher, peer and parent. In terms of the nature of feedback about a particular task, Hattie and Timperley (2007) relate it to how well a task is being performed and state that ‘corrective feedback’ is concerned with the degree of correctness, neatness, behavior, or specified criteria regarding task achievement. Chaudron (1977, cited in Panova and Lyster, 2002) defines corrective feedback as ‘any reactions of the teacher which clearly transforms, disapprovingly refers to, or demands improvement of the learner utterance’.

From the definitions above, it can be concluded that feedback, in the form of information or reactions, is given with regard to learners’ performance or utterance, most likely after they have performed or completed some assigned tasks or after speech production. On the other hand, mediation can be in any form of assistance, including information (e.g. suggestions, prompts, leading questions) and reactions (e.g. gestures, voice, facial expressions). Mediation is provided through interactions only in response to problems or mistakes that arise while learners are performing a task and engages both the teacher and learner(s) in interactions (see Feuerstein’s MLE attributes, 2.2.1, p. 50).

As for the purposes of the two practices, Lantolf and Poehner (2011) note that the purpose of promoting development makes mediation distinctive from corrective feedback. In corrective feedback, the purpose is mostly error correction or treatment whereas mediation starts from the teacher and learners collaboratively identifying difficulties or problems and then the teacher providing, for instance, prompts and suggestions to help learners solve the difficulties. This means learners are working within their ZPD, according to Vygotsky’s concepts of ZPD (see 2.2.1, p. 50), and mediation given by the teacher is used as a tool to help them cope with difficulties and to develop their ability in this sense. Furthermore, the purposes of mediation look beyond merely correcting errors or mistakes; it can involve improving learners’ understanding of concepts. In relation to this study, it may entail guiding learners in their presentation planning or writing scripts. Also, as stated by Poehner (2008), mediation does not aim solely at task completion, even though that might be the outcome, but at creating understanding and promoting learner development. Lantolf and Poehner (2011) note that if the product (i.e. a correct response, as in the case of error correction) rather than the process of learning is aimed at then explicit feedback is helpful. Lantolf and Poehner (2011) further stress the importance of facilitating the process of learning over the product for development to occur explaining that development takes place from other-regulation to self-regulation wherein learners are able to control their own performance. Explicit feedback given to all learners, who tend to be at different levels of proficiency, cannot be specific to the extent to which each learner can regulate his/her performance. In case of mediation, which is given to either an individual or a group keeping in mind that student or the group’s ZPD, the co-regulation happens during interactions when learner(s) responds to the

teacher’s mediation. The mediation will need to be fine-tuned in subsequent turns, if necessary, depending upon learner responses.

With regard to practices and procedures, researchers report different types of corrective feedback, and studies report a tendency that more than one type of feedback may be used in any lesson. As reported in Lyster and Ranta’s (1997) study on corrective feedback and learner uptake (i.e. responses to feedback), it was found that four teachers in immersion classrooms at the primary level used recasts more frequently (55% of total teachers’ responses that contained feedback) than elicitation, clarification request, metalinguistic feedback, explicit correction and repetition. Recasts happened when the teacher reformulated all or part of a student’s utterance, while elicitation was performed by eliciting completion of an utterance and clarification request by indicating an ill-formed utterance and asking students to repeat or reformulate it. Metalinguistic feedback included comments indicating there was an error, information through providing grammatical metalanguage referring to the nature of errors or a word definition, or questions drawing learner attention to the nature of errors but at the same time trying to elicit the information from the student. Explicit correction involved the teacher providing correct forms while in repetition the teacher repeated erroneous utterance by adjusting their intonation (Lyster and Ranta, 1997).

With regard to mediation, various forms such as hints, prompts, leading questions, and so on, can be adopted during mediation or interaction, but these forms are usually systematically graded from most implicit to most explicit. Unlike mediation, corrective feedback usually does not conceptualise levels of explicitness or require graded prompts. As noted by Poehner (2008), the move from implicit to explicit in

mediation allows the teacher to identify learners’ current level or ZPD thereby enabling the offering of appropriate mediation forms. Forms that are too implicit for a given learner and his or her ZPD are of no use to this learner; equally, if mediation is overly explicit for a given learner’s ZPD, it will not reveal this learner’s actual level of ability. The next section offers more details on how mediation can be conducted.