Teachers' Beliefs And Practices In Providing Corrective Feedback In The EFL Classroom

The study, based on Lyster and Ranta's (1997) framework of corrective feedback and supplemented by teachers' beliefs, explores the effect of teachers' beliefs on the provision of corrective feedback in EFL (teach English as a foreign language) classrooms. Four teachers were chosen in a college. Teachers' feedback practices were gained from the corresponding lesson observations. Teachers' beliefs on corrective feedback were uncovered through stimulated recall immediately after each lesson and beliefs questionnaire after the recall.The results show that teachers have high tolerance for learners' errors as indicated by few corrective feedback moves. The proportions of error types receiving corrective feedback from the teachers do not reflect the rate at which these error types actually occur. Moreover, recasts are not the dominant feedback strategies in the present study. Such results are different from the previous studies. Yet, only based on teachers' beliefs, it seems not enough to explain the differences. Thus, instructional strategies, definition of recasts and learners' proficiency level are regarded as the other possible reasons. The results also indicate that teachers tend to select feedback strategies in accordance with error types: recasts after grammatical errors, explicit correction after phonological errors and negotiation of form after lexical errors.Recall data show that the participants generally have positive beliefs on corrective feedback, but they think it is not necessary to pay much attention to corrective feedback in the EFL classroom. The participants do not show preference in terms of immediate or delayed correction. They emphasize that students' errors should be corrected according to different teaching focus (e.g., grammatical exercises or discussion) and the seriousness of errors. Teachers' beliefs show that teachers really select feedback strategies in accordance with error types. In addition, the results indicate both consistency and inconsistency in the relationship between teachers' beliefs and practices on the provision of corrective feedback. The challenge of integrating teachers' technical and practical knowledge, contextual factors, complexity of classroom and teachers' beliefs on language learning and teaching are suggested as possible reasons for the inconsistency.