Correctief Handelen Door De Leerkracht Tijdens De Engelse Les

This paper describes a study the corrective discourse used by teachers during English language classes at Dutch primary schools. Two observational instruments were used to determine (a) at which points during the intructional interaction children are corrected, and (b) the types of corrective discourse used. The results obtained in this study show that a 6.8% of classroom interaction is devoted to the teacher's corrective discourse. Corrective discourse was found to occur mainly during homework revision, revision exercises, elaboration of new material, guided classwork and revision of exercises done individually. Teachers tended to use elaborate combinations of corrective types and features. Often, learners were encouraged in different ways to correct their own errors. Sometimes, however, teachers merely provided the correct answer. The results presented are a small contribution to our knowledge of error correction in foreign language learning. The instrumentation used in this study could be used as a point of departure for further research.