EFL Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Oral Corrective Feedback: A Case Study

Abstract

This paper reports a qualitative case study of college-level English as a foreign language teachers’ attitudes towards oral corrective feedback. Our goal is to characterize such attitudes considering a model which integrates cognitive, affective and conative components as well as different aspects of oral corrective feedback. Six English instructors working in English language teaching at a university in southern Mexico were interviewed. Directed qualitative content analysis shows that (1) participants prefer implicit corrective feedback strategies, and (2) considerations of students’ feelings guide their overall attitudes toward corrective feedback. The participants seem unaware of most corrective feedback strategies and consideration of students’ cognition is absent in the composition of their corrective feedback attitudes. This finding suggests a need for more theory-based corrective feedback training and practice.

Keywords

• Corrective feedback
• English as a foreign language
• Mexico
• oral communication
• teachers’ attitudes