A Study Of Types Of Oral Corrective Feedback Strategies Used By Efl Teachers At Secondary Schools In Duhok City / Kurdistan Region Of Iraq

Abstract

This study aims to investigate types of oral corrective feedback strategies used by EFL teachers at secondary schools in Duhok city/Kurdistan region of Iraq. It also explores teachers’ attitudes towards the use of oral corrective feedback inside classrooms based on the three variables of gender, years of teaching experience, and the type of school (public or private). For these purposes, a classroom observation checklist was designed based on Panova and Lyster’s (2002) model of study in order to confirm the types of oral corrective feedback strategies used by the teachers, to highlight learners’ errors, and to examine the learners’ response to these strategies. Besides, a closed-ended questionnaire was distributed to the teachers to explore their attitudes about the effective use of oral corrective feedback. Fifty EFL teachers from twenty-five public and private secondary schools in Duhok were asked permission to attend their classes and observe the ways they correct their learners' errors. The data obtained from classroom observations and teachers’ responses to the questionnaire were identified, analysed quantitatively. The findings revealed that EFL teachers used different types of oral corrective feedback to learners’ errors. However, the most preferred correction strategy type used by them for correcting learners’ pronunciation errors was ‘recast’, and for grammatical errors was ‘metalinguistic explanation’. As for lexical errors, the strategy used most was ‘translation’. In terms of ‘learners’ uptake’, most of the corrective feedback provided resulted in ‘Repair’. Moreover, the study found out that EFL teachers have positive attitudes towards the use of oral corrective feedback. There were also no significant differences in their responses based on the three variables of gender, years of teaching experience and the type of school.