Lecturers’ and Students’ Perceptions and Preferences about ESL Corrective Feedback in Namibia: Towards an Intervention Model

Abstract

This study investigated tertiary lecturers' and students' perceptions and preferences on the provision of Corrective Feedback (CF) in the English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom at the Namibia University of Science and Technology. The study focused on students' speaking and writing skills in the Language in Practice English course. The findings revealed that both lecturers and students perceive CF as an essential aspect of developing ESL productive skills. Both lecturers and students were of the perception that CF is more focused on English grammar than form. Students preferred more correction than their lecturers provided. Both lecturers and students concurred that metalinguistic feedback is the best practice for CF in English. The contribution this study made is the ten-stage Intervention Model that works towards the effectiveness of ESL CF at tertiary level in Namibia. The model recommends that lecturers should carefully scrutinise the specific ESL target language features; practise a variety of suitable CF techniques; and cater for individual students' specific needs and preferences in learning English as a Second Language at tertiary level. Keywords: corrective feedback; perceptions; preferences; intervention model Significance of the studyError correction and provision of feedback are important aspects of L2 teaching and learning, because making errors is actually inevitable in the language learning process. The major focus of this paper is to present the ten-stage Intervention Model that is proposed for the effectiveness of English as a Second Language (henceforth ESL) Corrective Feedback (henceforth CF). The purpose of the study was to seek answers to the following research questions: 1) How do ESL lecturers and students perceive CF at tertiary level? 2) How do ESL tertiary level students respond to the CF provided to their errors? 3) What do ESL lecturers and students prefer as far as error treatment practice is concerned and why? 4) How can ESL students' errors be treated to promote the correct use of the English language? It is therefore imperative to first look at how the findings respond to these research questions before the presentation of the Intervention Model. Findings of the StudyThe findings revealed that CF for both speaking and writing skills is perceived by both lecturers and students as an essential aspect of developing ESL productive skills. Generally reporting, half the number of ESL lecturer participants in the present study reported to be confident with how they deal with their students' errors, while the other half showed that they sometimes hesitate and experience trouble with correcting errors of their students. Otherwise, the results illustrated that, overall, CF for both spoken and written errors takes place one way or another, in the ESL class.

College students’ preferences for written corrective feedback

“…In this study, the students, in Figure 2, has shown how important lecturers' feedback on all writing aspects is, and they also reported on Figure 3 that they always focused on each feedback that was provided. This result is in the contrary with the result of other studies where students mainly valued feedback on particular aspects, namely errors on grammar (Hamouda, 2011;Kagitci, 2013;Mungungu-Shipale & Kangira, 2017;Panhwar et al, 2016;Shahrani, 2013;Tom et al, 2013) and vocabulary (Kahraman & Yalvaç, 2015;Irwin, 2017) more than other writing aspects. It was proven by the percentages of participants in those studies that chose grammar and vocabulary much higher than other aspects such as mechanics and content.…”

Male and Female Students’ Preferences on the Oral Corrective Feedback in English as Foreign Language (EFL) Speaking Classroom

“…Aside from it, a lot of research have examined teachers' preferences of CF in second language acquisition (Behroozi & Karimnia, 2017;Motlagh, 2015) and also students' preferences (Alamri & Fawzi, 2016;Fitriana, Suhatmady, & Setiawan, 2016;Mungungu-Shipale & Kangira, 2017;Elçin & Öztürk, 2016;Papangkorn, 2015;Park, 2010;Yoshida, 2008). Surprisingly, the results of those research show a greater difference among students' preferences.…”

Öğretmenler ve Öğrencilerin Hata Düzeltme Tercihleri Arasındaki Boşluğu Keşfetme

“…Lately, a number of studies have been carried out to focus fully on teachers' error correction preferences in teaching second/foreign languages (Anggraeni, 2012;Behroozi & Karimnia, 2017;Jabu, Noni, Talib & Syam, 2017;Liskinasih, 2016;Motlagh, 2015;Suryoputro & Amaliah, 2016) or only students' error correction preferences (Alamri & Fawzi, 2016;Elçin & Öztürk, 2016;Fitriana, Suhatmady & Setiawan, 2016;Mungungu-Shipale & Kangira, 2017;Papangkorn, 2015;Park, 2010;Yoshida, 2008;Zhao, 2015). When these studies are compared, we see a noteworthy difference between what teachers and students show preference for.…”