Oral Corrective Feedback Strategies and Learner Uptake in EFL Setting

<p>This study investigates the strategies of oral corrective feedback applied by senior teachers in EFL speaking classes. It is to shed light on whether those strategies used are effective to lead the repair uptake. Additionally, it is to find out the attempts done by the learners to repair their errors. This study applies a qualitative method that uses classroom observations as the technique for collecting the data. The data are taken from speaking classes taught by three senior teachers in three universities. The study reveals that the corrective feedback strategies of correct forms elicited were effective to lead to repair uptake. Those were elicitation, clarification request, repetition, and metalinguistic cue. Related to uptake, the learners attempted to achieve well-formed sentences by the process of Needs Repair to Repair uptake. It involved the same errors and acknowledgment for Needs Repair and incorporation, repetition, and self-repair for repair uptake. It is recommended that teachers apply the correct form elicited corrective feedback strategies to correct learners’ erroneous forms and provide the uptake since it is the learning process.</p><p>Keywords: Oral Corrective Feedback strategies, Learners’ uptake, Repair, Needs Repair </p>

Oral Corrective Feedback on Pronunciation Errors: The Mediating Effects of Learners’ Engagement with Feedback

This study examined low-proficiency Iranian EFL students’ affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagement with oral corrective feedback (OCF) on interdental fricative errors: /θ/and/ð/. The data were collected from 27 learners with favorable and unfavorable perceptions about OCF. After receiving OCF on 30 tested and 30 untested lexical items in tutoring sessions, the participants took a posttest. The analysis of the data showed that the learners with positive perceptions about OCF had significantly higher accuracy gains, as shown by their posttest results. The interviews showed that the learners’ positive perceptions about OCF had positive affective engagement. Also, the learners who perceived pronunciation accuracy as an important component of their language development showed positive patterns of affective engagement with OCF. Additionally, the learners who affectively engaged with direct OCF positively tended to show positive behavioral and cognitive engagement with feedback. These learners reviewed the provided OCF and practiced the correction by employing an array of cognitive strategies (e.g., repetition). Overall, our findings show that positive engagement with feedback can result in higher pronunciation accuracy gains. Therefore, teachers should familiarize themselves with their students’ perceptions about feedback on their pronunciation errors, since these perceptions may impact the way students engage with feedback affectively, behaviorally, and cognitively. For instance, students who value pronunciation accuracy may be more likely to positively engage with feedback on pronunciation errors, while students who emphasize effective communication may negatively engage with such feedback.

Targets and Sources of Oral Corrective Feedback in English as a Foreign Language Classrooms: Are Students' and Teachers' Beliefs Aligned?

Recent decades have witnessed extensive research focusing on oral corrective feedback (CF), a key aspect of English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) learning and teaching, but relatively little research has examined the relationship between learner and teacher beliefs about CF. The study reported in this article investigated the relationship between teacher and learner beliefs regarding the optimal targets and sources of CF in Vietnamese secondary EFL contexts. Data which were collected at four Vietnamese public high schools included questionnaires completed by 250 students, interviews with 15 of them, and interviews with 24 teachers. The findings showed that the students were happy to receive CF to all types of errors, including less important errors such as those not influencing their communicative success. The teachers were generally more selective in their choices of error types, but they sometimes faced some tensions between their overall teaching objective and the students' practical needs to learn the material that would be tested in subsequent exams. Regarding CF sources, the students preferred teacher correction to self-correction or peer correction although they believed that self-correction was effective for their learning and wished their teachers would provide them with training on how to conduct peer correction and self-correction. The teachers also thought that it was part of their role to be the main CF providers to ensure the accuracy of classroom feedback. Some teachers were skeptical about their students' ability to provide peer CF. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

High school EFL students’ beliefs about oral corrective feedback: The role of gender, motivation and extraversion

This study employed an explanatory sequential mixed-methods research design to examine the beliefs of Vietnamese EFL students concerning oral corrective feedback (CF) and the role of some individual differences in these beliefs. The data consisted of questionnaires completed by 250 Vietnamese high school students and follow-up interviews with 15 of them. Exploratory factor analysis revealed six latent factors underlying students’ beliefs about CF, namely, (1) output-prompting CF and eliciting recasts, (2) desire for CF, (3) non-verbal cues, (4) important errors, (5) input-providing CF, and (6) less important errors. Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis of the interviews showed that students were positive about CF. They liked both input-providing CF and output-prompting CF for all error types. Metalinguistic feedback was the most strongly preferred, while clarification request was the least preferred. Further statistical analyses revealed some interesting relationships between students’ beliefs about CF and their gender, English learning motivation, and self-rated introversion/extraversion. Females were more positive about CF than males, and extraverted females were more positive about input-providing CF than introverted females. Also, students learning English for exams were more positive about CF than those learning English for communication. Pedagogical implications for effective feedback provision in EFL contexts are discussed.