The relationship between university EFL teachers’ oral feedback beliefs and practices and the impact of individual differences

Abstract

Abstract This study investigated Turkish EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices about the aspects of oral corrective feedback (OCF). It explored the impact of individual differences, namely educational background, special training, and teaching experience, on the relationship between the beliefs and practices. Data on teachers’ practices were collected via 153 h of classroom observations from 51 Turkish EFL teachers at two different universities, and teachers’ beliefs were gathered by a task about OCF. The results showed that teachers’ beliefs and practices were consistent on the aspects of perceived effectiveness, grammatical errors, implicit and explicit feedback. However, their beliefs and practices were inconsistent regarding lexical, phonological errors, and timing of OCF. The results also revealed that of the three individual differences, teaching experience most impacted the consistency between beliefs and practices, thus showing the greater role of teaching experience over special training and educational background on the consistency between beliefs and practices about OCF.