The Relationship between EFL Teachers’ Preferences of Corrective Feedback and Their Attitudes towards Communicative Language Teaching

Ali Zangoei ,Ali Derakhshan

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.3n.5p.82

Abstract

Despite a laissez-faire approach to errors nowadays, appropriate corrective feedback makes an educational environment more communicative and effective. The present correlational study sought to scrutinize the relationship between EFL teachers’ preferences of corrective feedback (CF) and their attitudes towards principles of communicative language teaching (CLT). To do so, 108 EFL teachers completed a questionnaire containing three parts, e.g. demographic information, attitudes towards principles of CLT (24 items adopted from Chang, 2011) and CF preferences. Results of Chi Square Test confirmed the relationship between these two variables. It was also found that elicitation and metalinguistic feedback were the most frequently selected types by the participants as well as preferences of those EFL teachers who gained higher scores in CLT attitude scale. The findings can provide pedagogical implications to employ particular types of CFs in English classrooms to pave the ways for effective communication in EFL settings.

Highlights

Errors inevitably occur in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes
Based on the data obtained from the instruments, it was found that Elicitation was the most favorable type of corrective feedback (CF) employed by Iranian EFL teachers during the process of teaching
According to Shayestefar’s(2009) findings which indicated that Metalinguistic and Explicit corrections could be usefully incorporated into EFL classrooms, these findings supported Metalinguistic feedback and rejected the latter, Explicit CF

Summary

Introduction

Errors inevitably occur in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes. The importance lies in the fact that how teachers respond to such errors while teaching new materials. Different teachers behave differently to correct their pupils’ errors. Prior to presenting EFL teachers’with different perspectives on employing various types of corrective feedback (CF), it seems worthwhile to introduce different CFs. 1.1 Different Types of Corrective Feedback. According to Lyster and Ranta (1997), there are seven types of feedback which are as follows:. · Explicit Correction: It refers to “the explicit provision of the correct form". As the teacher provides the correct form, he or she clearly indicates that what the student had said was incorrect (e.g., ‘Oh, you mean,’ ‘You should say’)”

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Conclusion