Relationship between student anxiety and corrective feedback: Case of Korean college-level EFL learners

This study investigated the relationship between foreign language anxiety and corrective feedback. The data for this investigation were gathered through a survey, an experiment, and interviews. The study produced five key findings pointing to a significant correlation between foreign language anxiety and corrective feedback. First, the survey of 819 Korean university-level EFL learners indicated average levels of foreign language anxiety among the learners in general, but with significant variance in levels of anxiety relative to the learners' proficiency levels. Second, the survey also revealed that the learners generally had very positive attitudes toward error correction, but, again, with significantly different attitude scores relative to the learners' proficiency levels. Third, the correlations between EFL learners' attitudes toward error correction and their anxiety levels were statistically significant across all proficiency levels and in all foreign language anxiety factors. Fourth, the experiment revealed that recast group learners were more comfortable in their conversation classes than non-recast group learners, but only in relation to beginning students' speaking anxiety. Finally, through analysis of the interviews with individual learners, various sources of anxiety were discovered.; The results showed that corrective feedback was directly related to foreign language anxiety, especially speaking anxiety. Specifically, in the survey, a strong negative correlation was found between corrective feedback and speaking anxiety, a moderate negative correlation in the case of native speaker anxiety, and weak negative correlations in the case of low self-confidence on English ability and English test anxiety. It should be noted that most of the participating learners reported, in measuring student anxiety, that they were anxious speaking English in front of other students, and, in measuring student attitudes, that they were afraid that other students laughed at them when being corrected. In addition, in the experiment, recast produced less speaking anxiety than overt explicit correction. Finally, in the interviews, most learners from the non-recast group reported that a primary reason for their anxiety when speaking English was the teachers' overt explicit error correction, while most learners from the recast group reported that they were comfortable with the correction methods.