Students’ and Teachers’ Perceptions and Preferences for Oral Corrective Feedback: Do They Match?

Abstract

Perceptions and perspectives about corrective feedback (CF) have recently attracted some attention in the CF literature. Few studies, however, have delved into students’ and teachers’ CF perceptions and preferences and compared them. This study is an attempt to explore Iranian EFL teachers’ and students’ perceptions and preferences for different amounts and types of oral corrective feedback. Two parallel questionnaires were used to gather quantitative and qualitative data from twenty eight teachers and eighty six of their students. Results revealed significant differences between teachers’ and students’ perceptions about the amounts and types of CF and also about different types of errors to be corrected. Contrary to their teachers, students in this study were found to be seeking large amounts of explicit corrective feedback provided by the teacher. As for the pedagogical implications, ‘meta-correction’ is suggested as a solution to the problem of conflicting CF perceptions of students and teachers and to improve and enhance error correction practices within Iranian EFL context.