Teachers’ and Students’ Perspectives to the Impact of Oral Corrective Feedback on Student’s Speaking Proficiency in English Speaking Classes

Abstract

Helping students to promote their communication skills in this globalized world is one of teachers’ main concerns in English teaching. The ways that teachers give oral corrective feedback (OCF) to students’ errors also have influenced students’ language proficiency improvement. There has been some research on how teachers and students perceive OCF in language classrooms, but little has been conducted on teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the impact of OCF on students’ speaking ability through the lens of sociocultural theory. This qualitative study investigates teachers’ and students’ perspectives regarding the impact of OCF on student’s speaking proficiency in English speaking classes at the tertiary level in Vietnam. Data were gathered from five semi-structured interviews with five EFL teachers and five focus group interviews with 35 first-year students. Findings showed teachers' and students’ support of the impact of OCF on helping students to notice their errors, to be more responsible for their own study, and to increase students’ learning motivation and linguistic knowledge as well. On the basis of the findings, pedagogical implications are discussed.