The negotiation of form - Further discussion of teaching in French immersion classrooms - But not the last word

A set of descriptive studies was undertaken in four French immersion classrooms at the elementary level with a view to further characterizing the negotiation of form in classroom discourse. The negotiation of form consists of at least four interactional moves that encourage peer- and self-repair and aim to draw attention to non-target output. Unlike the negotiation of form, recasts - the most widely used type of corrective feedback - are unable to lead to peer- or self-repair. Moreover, they risk being perceived ambiguously by classroom learners because their discourse functions resemble those of noncorrective repetition and because they are often accompanied by signs of approval. Immediate repairs of phonological errors, however, lend to follow recasts, whereas most immediate repairs of lexical and grammatical errors result from negotiation of form.