ABSTRACT
The chapter aims to give an overview of issues of oral Corrective Feedback (CF) in tandem based on our analysis of feedback given to the tandem learners by their native speaker (NS) partners in the SITAF corpus (Horgues & Scheuer, 2015), which consists of longitudinal video-recordings of spoken interactions by 21 French/English tandem pairs. Our methodology derives from the typology established in previous research into CF in the context of L2 classroom teaching (Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Sheen, 2006; Lyster, Saito, & Sato, 2013), which we have adapted to the characteristics of peer-to-peer tandem exchanges. Our study shows how the tandem learning environment shapes (1) both participants’ roles in the CF sequence, (2) the focus of the corrections, (3) the strategies used by the NS ‘corrector’ and (4) the L2 learner’s uptake upon receiving CF. Most of the CF was provided through recasts during the storytelling game of the first recording session and it targeted vocabulary. Overall, the French NS supplied twice as much CF as their English-speaking counterparts. While these characteristics are partly linked to task-effects, session-effects and/or structural differences between English and French, profound sociolinguistic and cultural factors may have to be invoked to explain other asymmetries.
