Abstract

In the realm of language teaching, error correction has a long and contentious history. Some schools of thought like nativism refute error correction while others firmly adhere to error correction and regard error as a sin that should be avoided. This dilemma bewilders TEFL practitioners and teachers how to treat errors. Due to the controversial nature of this issue, whether and how to correct errors have spawned numerous celebrated publications in this area in the domains of first language acquisition (FLA) and second language acquisition (SLA). In this vein, lots of studies have probed the role of corrective feedbacks in language classrooms. This paper reviews the main surveys on corrective feedback, providing the theoretical rational for and against error correction, shedding light on different types of corrective feedbacks, and encapsulating the theoretical and empirical studies conducted to investigate corrective feedback and its impact on different aspects of language, offering issues for further directions to cast away all the doubts in this domain.

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