Investigating EFL Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices about Written Corrective Feedback: A Large-scale Study

Abstract

An increasing number of studies have examined teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding written corrective feedback (WCF) in recent years. However, the sample size in these previous studies tends to be small. Through questionnaires and teacher interviews, the present study explored the WCF beliefs and practices of 2,012 EFL teachers in Beijing, China. It found that the majority of teachers regarded error correction as a responsibility shared by both teachers and students, and they preferred selective WCF and integrative use of direct and indirect WCF methods. Also, they tended to have confidence in the effectiveness of their WCF. As for their practices, they would mostly underline the errors and point out the types or underline all errors with types indicated. In addition, most teachers would give feedback directly, and the number of teachers for and against delivering feedback on recurring errors seemed to be even. This study indicates the necessity of offering in-service EFL teachers training on WCF.