Verbal communication is one aspect of language education in German elementary curriculums. Elementary students are supposed to learn linguistic practices that ultimately allow them to participate in all communicative areas of society. Therefore, language teaching in school builds on the communicative practices that students experience at home and outside of school (Becker-Mrotzek, 2009).

Due to ongoing migration, there is a growing language diversity among elementary school students in Germany and dealing with this is a key challenge for language teachers (McElvany et al., 2013). Teachers’ are supposed to create inclusive language-learning environments that appreciate this language diversity, are adapted to students’ individual needs and allow all students to achieve desired language learning goals. Teachers create such an inclusive environment mainly through their speech and dialogue with the students. They provide tasks and activities that allow all students to participate and offer instructional and emotional support when it seems necessary and appropriate to help students overcome certain learning barriers (Naugk et al., 2016).

During such language lessons, teachers and students frequently make verbal errors. Such errors are an important diagnostic indicator for the assessment of the students' linguistic competence and for the selection of individual language teaching strategies (Schiefele et al., 2019). According to Kleppin (1997), a linguistic error refers to a violation of formal grammatical rules, informal rules or specific social norms. The definition of an error is always very much dependent on the situation and is usually subject to the judgment of the teacher. Verbal errors also provide individual learning opportunities for the students. To help students learn from their errors, teachers’ should give students an immediate corrective feedback (Lüdtke & Stitzinger, 2017). However, corrective feedback can also expose students’ failure and impair their sense of belonging and the inclusive climate in the classroom. Therefore, the timing and wording of the corrective feedback and the corresponding interpretation of the respective student is critical for the maintenance of inclusive language learning environments.

The teacher’s corrective feedback can have an explicit and often an implicit meaning, which can trigger different emotions. From a psychoanalytical perspective (Hierdeis, 2016), the implicit or unconscious meaning of a teacher’s corrective feedback refers to unspoken expectations, wishes, desires and motivations towards the students and the lesson. At the same time, a student’s interpretation of the corrective feedback is affected by previous experiences with the teacher and relational dynamics between the student and his parents. Students also project parental desires and wishes onto the teachers and possibly respond to criticism in the same ways as they respond to deprivation of parental affection.  Therefore, the unconscious meaning and meaning making of a corrective feedback is of special importance with regard to the learning outcomes of the corrective feedback and the students’ experience of the inclusive classroom community.

However, little is known about possible implicit meanings of a corrective feedback and students’ emotional responses to it. In the light of this research gap, the presented study explored the corrective feedbacks of a teacher in a diverse elementary German language classroom and the corresponding emotional student responses, with a specific focus on unconscious meanings and dynamics. The results highlight, that even minor connotations of a corrective feedback can trigger certain unconscious relational dynamics that result in very negative emotional student responses and potentially exclude minority students from the classroom community. Further implications for the implementation of corrective feedbacks and possible teacher training measures are discussed.

In order to explore the unconscious dynamics of a teacher’s corrective feedbacks and students’ emotional responses in an elementary language classroom, this study used a single case research design. One videotaped German lesson in a fourth grade class was analysed using consensual coding and depth hermeneutics. First, two researchers rated the whole video in order to identify distinct corrective feedbacks by the teacher during the lesson. Consensual coding (Hill, 2021) understands the coding as a dialogical process in which two raters try to analyse the data material in its complexity and ambiguity. The raters first code independently of each other and then discuss discrepancies openly and repeatedly. The goal is to come to an agreement and at the same time to allow for differences. Depth hermeneutics (König, 2000) seemed particularly appropriate for the analysis of the unconscious dynamics during a language lesson. Lorenzer (1986) introduced depth hermeneutics as a qualitative method for psychoanalytic cultural research. It’s basic assumption is, that social interactions always enact both manifest motives, expectations, intentions, concerns, etc., as well as latent desires, dreams, fears, or other affects. This creates a distinct ambiguity of social interactions, which can be explored through depth hermeneutics. Scenes that irritate or appear inconsistent are key scenes through which access to the unconcious meaning of the interaction is gained. For this purpose, a group of qualified researchers viewed the video without prior instruction and then began an open discussion about individual understandings and emotional responses. The researchers were encouraged to note any fantasies, irritations, or emotions that the material subjectively triggered in them and to contribute to the discussion. In the course of this discussion, relevant key scenes were identified and further discussed in detail. The different emotional responses to the video give rise to a controversial discussion. Finally, the presenting researcher condensed the results from the consensual coding and the depth hermeneutical discussion to a complex case description and formulated hypotheses with regard to the central research question.

Twelve scenes were identified in which the teacher offers students a corrective feedback. In nine of these scenes the teacher addresses the same student. The frequency with which the teacher corrects this student suggests that, on one hand, the student is actively participating verbally in the lesson and, on the other hand, the teacher is making an effort to support his language development. However, the wording of one corrective feedback irritates the researchers in the depth hermeneutical group and results in a very controversial and emotional discussion. In this particular corrective feedback, the teacher carefully addresses the student’s error but implicitly indicates that the student’s error might have a negative impact on the learning process of the whole class. This negative connotation of the corrective feedback may not only discourage the student from engaging further in class, but also marks him as an outsider whose learning process is detrimental to the learning of his classmates. Thus, this particular corrective feedback unconsciously excludes him from the classroom community and inhibits his further language learning process. To implement corrective feedback effectively in the classroom and maintain an inclusive learning environment, teachers’ need to be aware of the subtle linguistic differences and to constantly reflect on the individual wording and subjective meaning of their corrective feedback in the classroom.

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