This article reports the results of an investigation into how native speakers of English provide corrective feedback to errors in conversations with their normative speaker friends. We also present other types of noncorrective conversational repair. From approximately 12.7 hours of taped conversations in social settings, we learned that native speakers responded to errors by using either on‐record or off‐record corrective feedback. In addition, they used several noncorrective discourse devices to repair conversational difficulties: word searches, requests for help, clarification requests, and confirmation checks. The interaction of corrective feedback is described, which shows that much of native speaker corrective feedback occurs at transition points in conversation, not as interruptions.

This article presents the findings of a survey of ESL students' attitudes toward and preferences for the correction of spoken errors by native speaker friends. The 418 subjects reported generally positive attitudes toward error correction and claimed to prefer even more correction than their friends did. They saw correcting errors as facilitating—even being necessary—for the improvement of their oral English.

In an investigation of native speaker (NS)-nonnative speaker (NNS) conversations in social settings, we learn that only a small percentage (8.9%) of NNS errors were corrected by NSs. These corrections occurred in response to errors of fact, discourse, vocabulary, syntax, and omission. Since discourse and vocabulary errors were corrected more frequently than errors in syntax and omission, we recommend that the treatment of vocabulary in the ESL classroom be reexamined, and that serious consideration be given to teaching ESL students the discoursal properties of English.