The Effect of Teacher’s Corrective Feedback Through Online Conferencing on Elementary Students’ English-Speaking Confidence

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of teacher's corrective feedback through online conferencing on elementary students' English-speaking confidence. This study was conducted for 4 months from August to December 2020. There were 6 participants, aged 8 to 13 enrolled in a private education institute where they attended English classes using mobile devices. During this case study, the students were asked to use English, learners’ target language when interacting with their teacher. When learners struggled to understand the teacher’s English instructions, the teacher guided them in Korean. All the classes were video-recorded and transcribed by the teacher. Data were analyzed in order to examine the progress of participants’ voluntary English production stimulated by having conversational interactions with the teacher. The findings were as follows. First, participants’ anxiety level was high in the beginning. Second, they were able to speak English words, give their opinions in English, and join the conversation in English with the teacher. Lastly, feedback from the teacher through conversational interactions helped learners understand how to speak in English better and build up confidence. As a result, it is necessary to interact with the teachers and peers using learners’ target language to improve English communication skills.