L2 Teachers’ Oral Corrective Feedback Practices in Relation to Their CF Beliefs and Learner Uptake

Abstract

Over the years, instructed SLA research emphasized corrective feedback (CF) interactions in different instructional contexts and showed the facilitative role of CF in L2 development. However, little research has investigated teachers' CF practices in relation to their beliefs and their impact on learner uptake in heritage language learning contexts. Through structured observations and semi-structured interviews, this study examined two teachers' CF practices, beliefs, and their impact on L2 learning in Arabic as a Heritage Language (AHL) context in one lower intermediate (LI) and one higher intermediate (HI) proficiency classes in a K-12 school in the USA. A total of 20 hour-observation data from two classes with 30 students were collected and coded based on Lyster and Ranta's (1997, 2007) taxonomy of CF types. The interview data were collected from the two class teachers and thematically coded and analyzed based on the grounded theory approach. The results showed that both teachers shared positive beliefs about CF, and preference for implicit CF and prompts. LI Teacher’s CF practices largely and HI Teacher’s practices fully reflected their CF beliefs. Whereas LI Teacher largely provided feedback for learners’ lexical errors, HI Teacher predominantly responded to learners’ grammatical errors. LI Teacher’s use of elicitation, recast, and metalinguistic feedback prove effective in leading to high uptake and repair rate. On the other hand, elicitation, and clarification requests in HI Teachers’ class were the most effective CF types. The findings suggest that teachers with informed knowledge of CF can provide CF that might ultimately lead to high uptake and repair.