The International Journal of Pedagogy and Curriculum Volume #, Publication Year, <community URL>, ISSN # © Common Ground, Diana Pili-Moss, All Rights Reserved Permissions: cg-support@commongroundpublishing.com The role and timing of corrective feedback in L2 discussion activities Diana Pili-Moss, University of Manchester, United Kingdom Abstract: In this article I focus on the role of corrective feedback in fluency activities in second language acquisition research (SLA) compared to commonly adopted teaching methodology. The role of corrective feedback has changed significantly in recent years and both researchers and practitioners currently agree on its importance for the development of language accuracy in communicative tasks. However, researchers’ and practitioners’ views are still divergent especially in relation to the use of immediate correction of non-target utterances in spoken interaction. Most practitioners consider delayed feedback as the strategy of choice in these contexts, whereas SLA researchers maintain that immediate feedback is preferable. As yet, research has not focused enough on the study of delayed feedback to provide conclusive evidence to support or challenge current teaching practice. In Section 1 I present an overview of the main feedback strategies discussed in the current SLA literature, including recasts and elicitations. In Section 2 and 3 I review current ideas on how to provide feedback in fluency activities according to SLA interactional approaches and commonly adopted teaching practice. I will also present an example of a speaking activity where opportunities for feedback were designed according to current teaching methodology. Keywords: Oral Feedback, Delayed Corrective Feedback, L2 Accuracy, Fluency Activities, Elicitations, Second Language Acquisition, Teaching Practice. The role of feedback in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) he role of teacher feedback in the second language classroom has changed significantly in the last three decades in relation to the rising importance attributed to interaction. In particular the use of teaching strategies that could help learners focus on the form of the language while performing communicative tasks has been advocated as a means to enhance language accuracy in the communicative classroom. In work by Long (Long 1981, 1996, 2006) the idea started to emerge that together with comprehensible input, interaction with more competent speakers, especially in the form of feedback utterances, was a crucial variable in enhancing the acquisition process because it provides learners with the opportunity to attend to linguistic forms in the context of communicative interaction where the main focus remains on meaning (Interaction Hypothesis). One of the feedback moves that have been more extensively studied in the SLA literature are recasts. Long defines recasts as: utterances that rephrase a child’s utterance by changing one or more components (subject, verb, object) while still referring to its central meaning. (Long 1996, 434) The learner-teacher interaction in (1) represents an example of recast: T