A Study On Novice And Experienced Efl Teachers’ Cognitions On Corrective Feedback In Junior High Schools

The current study focuses on novice and experienced EFL teachers’ cognitions on corrective feedback(CF) in junior high schools. In the last several decades, the studies on corrective feedback are in full swing. Researchers have studied CF from different aspects, for example, error types, teachers’ feedback, and learners’ uptake. And Basturkermen(2012)proposes to combine the study of teacher cognition with CF. Thus the present study compares novice and experienced teachers’ understanding of CF in their own classrooms, and aims to find out whether there are differences, what are the differences if any, and why are the differences. The four research questions are as follows: 1) Are there any differences between the novice and experienced teachers’ cognitions on the necessity of CF? 2) Are there any differences between the novice and experienced teachers’ cognitions on the timing of CF? 3)Are there any differences between the novice and experienced teachers’ cognitions on the effetieveness of different types of CF? 4) What sources do the novice and experienced teachers contribute their cognitions on CF to?The author did a research for a month and employed questionnaires, interviews and classroom observation to answer the research questions. The author adopted the questionnaire of Qiu Zhaojie(1997), Ge Xianru and Gao Yuying(2005), and Hu Jian and Guo Haoru(2005), and divided the questions into four parts according to Ellis’ s study(2009), in order to discover teachers’ cognitions on the necessity, the timing, and the types of CF and the sources of their cognitions. Data were collected from 53 novice teachers and 89 experienced teachers from 8 junior high schools through questionnaire, classroom observation and follow-up interview. After transcribing the audio of interview and classroom observation, there are altogether 32156-word interview materials and 19068-word observation materials.Results show the significant differences between the two groups of teachers’ cognitions on CF. The experienced teachers are more tolerant towards learners’ errors, and they are more flexible in employing CF. At the same time, the findings indicates that teachers’ cognitions on CF mostly are from their learning experiences in school or teaching experiences rather than the teacher training programs. Interview data show that teachers’ teaching experiences raisetheir awareness of the role of mediating factors, for example learner factors, error frequency,error types, task types. As a pedagogic implication, the per-service teachers should be given the opportunities for acquiring the theoretical understanding of CF, and the novice teachers should improve their teaching ability through conscious reflection.