Oral corrective feedback: Pre-service English as a second language teachers’ beliefs and practices

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between pre-service English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and their actual teaching practices. To determine the nature of this relationship, 99 teachers-in-training with little or no teaching experience were asked to complete a questionnaire seeking information about their teaching beliefs, particularly about oral corrective feedback (i.e. teachers’ responses to students’ language errors). The teachers’ responses were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis which revealed several dimensions underlying their beliefs. To examine how these beliefs affect classroom performance, 10 of the teachers were first asked to indicate how they would correct language errors illustrated in hypothetical (videotaped) classroom scenarios and were then observed teaching an authentic ESL class. The classes were video-recorded and 30-minute teacher-fronted communicative segments from the lessons were analysed for the number and type of errors learners made and the teachers addressed. Results indicate a multifarious relationship between stated beliefs and actual teaching practices in that while the teachers corrected fewer errors than they believed they would, they preferred the same corrective techniques in both hypothetical and actual teaching situations. Most notably, the study suggests that the complexities of the language classroom and the pre-service teachers’ lack of experience at integrating theoretical knowledge and practical skills, lead them to behave overall as native-speaking interlocutors, not as language teachers. Implications for teacher training are discussed.

English Language Teachers’ Oral Corrective Preferences and Practices Across Proficiency Groups

“…The observed teachers' individual performance (see Table 3) showed that a majority of them, as in the previous studies (e.g., Jean & Simard, 2011;Kartchava et al, 2018;Lee, 2013), left more than half of the errors untreated. This was particularly so in the case of advanced learners; the teachers, except for Teacher 5, provided fewer corrections for the advanced learners in practice.…”

“…This finding points to the need for dispelling teachers' misconceptions about how learners may react to correction and informing them about the results of studies and the benefits of other types of feedback for different proficiency groups in the framework of professional development programs, which, as pointed out by Borg (2003), play a determining role in forming teachers' cognitive processes. As Kartchava et al (2018) noted, teachers' limited knowledge "about how, when, and in what amounts to provide feedback prevents them from reconciling their beliefs with classroom practices" (p. 238).…”

“…The results of a recent study by Kartchava et al (2018) were also indicative of a mismatch between teachers' beliefs about correction and their corrective practices. They asked 10 teachers to complete a questionnaire based on theoretical and empirical findings in the literature related to the importance of providing feedback, students' anxiety and motivation, interrupting the communicative flow, and the delay and extent of feedback.…”

“…In other words, their differentiation between less and more proficient learners was mainly related to the different emotional reactions the teachers believed they show to correction; the more proficient the learners are, the less sensitive they will be to correction. Vásquez and Harvey (2010) and Kartchava et al (2018) also found that the teachers in their teacher education program initially emphasized the affective dimension of error correction. Roothooft and Breeze (2016) came up with a similar finding.…”

A Pragmatic Study on Teachers’ Feedback in EFL Classroom in China

“…Long (1983) found that the most common method teachers utilize to correct students is restatement. Error correction has been a controversial type of feedback in SLA studies (Azad 2016;Kartchava & Gatbonton, 2020;McDonough & Sato, 2019). One group declares that too often correcting the errors made by students may break down their talk to pieces without favoring complete and coherent production, but another group testified that error correction can help English learning.…”