Effects of Corrective Feedback on Second Language Pronunciation Development

Given that the pedagogical potential of corrective feedback (CF) for second language (L2) pronunciation development has received rapidly increasing interest in recent years (e.g., Saito & Lyster, 2012 in Language Learning), it is timely and prudent to provide a piece of scholarly work which focuses on synthesizing and presenting the current state of affairs. According to existing descriptive studies, both teachers and learners equally consider the provision of CF to be a crucial component of L2 pronunciation development, especially when the errors in question hinder successful communication. More recently, a growing number of scholars have investigated the acquisitional value of pronunciation-focused CF by conducting quasi-experimental studies with a pre-test/post-test design in both classroom and laboratory settings. Whereas the results have generally shown that pronunciation-focused CF facilitates the development of both segmental and suprasegmental accuracy, the effectiveness of such CF techniques appears to be subject to a great deal of individual variability. Specifically, the potentials of pronunciation-focused CF can be maximized (a) when L2 learners have enough phonetic knowledge, conversational experience, and perceptual awareness of target sounds; (b) when CF provides model pronunciation forms (e.g., recasts rather than prompts); and (c) when the target of instruction concerns communicatively important and salient features.