Indian Journal of Fundamental and Applied Life Sciences ISSN: 2231– 6345 (Online) An Open Access, Online International Journal Available at www.cibtech.org/sp.ed/jls/2015/01/jls.htm 2015 Vol.5 (S1), pp. 3565-3575/Shokrpour and Zarei Research Article © Copyright 2014 | Centre for Info Bio Technology (CIBTech) 3565 THE EFFICACY OF EXPLICIT CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK DURING PICTURE-CUED TASKS OF SPEAKING ASSESSMENT ON EFL LEARNERS *Shokrpour N. 1 and Zarei L. 2 1 English Department, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz/Iran 1 Department of ELT, Yasuj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Yasuj, Iran *Author for Correspondence ABSTRACT Feedback is used as a basis for improvement. In language teaching, feedback gives information about reactions to a product or a learner’s performance of a task. The present study was carried out to examine the effect of explicit corrective feedback (CF) with metalinguistic rules on picture-cued task of speaking assessment for production of seven common English tenses. 54 female intermediate participants aged 14 to 18 years old studying at onelanguage institute in Shiraz, Iran were selected based on non-probability sampling. 27 learners received CFin the experimental group and 27 learners in the control groupreceived no CF through picture-cued task of speaking assessment.The study followed a quasi-experimental design with pre-test, treatment, immediate, and delayed post-test. In order to conduct the study, a sample model of Oxford placement test was used to determine the participants'level of English proficiency. A pilot test was conducted on 10 students for pre-test which was in the form of an oral test to make sure about homogeneity of the groups in speaking production. Analysis of the data was then performed using t-test. The results of independent samples t- test revealed that while the two groups were homogeneous based on their oral proficiency at the beginning of the study, the experimental group outperformed the control group in the immediate and delayed post-oral testing. The results also confirmed that the effect of error correction was more significant on present perfect tense and less significant on simple present tense. Conducting studies like the present one may contribute to better teaching and testing oral skills to the foreign language learners. Keywords: Explicit Error Feedback, Speaking Assessment, Picture-Cued Task of Speaking INTRODUCTION Corrective Feedback Tornburg (2005) suggested that it is important to mention that errors are an integral part of the learning process.In 2006, Mackey's study defined CFas negative feedback provides the students with information about whether their speeches had errors or were rather problematic. It should be mentioned here that negative feedback is an interactional move that represents explicitly or implicitly any non-target-like structure in the students' speeches that might need correction. CF can be used in different methods in teaching grammar or form-focused instruction (any planned or incidental instructional activity that is intended to induce language learners to pay attention to linguistic form (Ellis, 2001). Corrective feedback can be considered as a response to learners' problematic utterance through (Ellis et al., 2006): 1. identifying the place of the error that has taken place 2. making the correct form of the problematic utterance 3. bringing metalinguistic information to describe the nature of the error There are many types of Lyster and Saito (2010) classified different CF types, which can be identified as two broad categories: reformulations and prompts. Reformulations contain recasts and explicit correction; prompts contain different signals other than reformulations to push learners to self-repair. Ellis (2012) offered a category of oral CF strategies, which covers the distinction between reformulations/prompts and implicit /explicit CF. Explicit CF can be given to learners with and without metalinguistic information (Ranta and Lyster, 2007; Sheen and Ellis, 2011).