Novice And Experienced Teachers' Practice And Beliefs About Corrective Feedback In Oral EFL Classrooms

For Chinese students,it is inevitable to commit errors during second language acquisition.Corrective feedback(CF)is crucial in dealing with students' inaccurate utterances,and it plays a positive role in enhancing students' oral proficiency.In the past two decades,a growing body of research has been conducted on CF in natural classrooms and laboratory contexts abroad,but research on CF is still very scarce in China.Using qualitative method,the present study intends to explore novice and experienced teachers' actual practice,stated belief about CF as well as the relationship of the teachers' stated belief and their practice in oral EFL classrooms.Data were collected through classroom observation,semi-structured interviews and stimulated recal s.The study was conducted in a primary school in Shenzhen from the beginning of November till the end of December,2016.Two novice teachers and two experienced teachers participated in it.The pre-observation interview was conducted to learn about their general personal information and perceptions of teaching English.Then non-participatory observations were employed(four classes for each participant,640 minutes in total).Stimulated recall was carried out within 24 hours after each participant's classroom observation was completed.Finally,the post-observation interview was carried out with each teacher to state their beliefs about CF.The major findings of the study are as follows:1)The four teachers' actual practices of CF are summarized: It was observed that they all used CF frequently,especially two experienced teachers,due to a low tolerance for students' errors.They had different preferences for CF strategies,but the most frequent type was recast.The least frequently used type of CF of two novice teachers was clarification request,while two experienced teachers used metalinguistic feedback least.The linguistic target of CF they most focused on was grammar,and least focused on was vocabulary.2)Four teachers' beliefs about CF are summarized: Four novice and experienced teachers thought errors were natural,but denied that all students' spoken errors should be corrected.They stated that CF was conducive to students' language learning,except the novice teacher(Cathy).Although they all claimed they didn't have clear knowledge of CF,they were all using it.In terms of the timing of CF,they were concerned about students' affective reaction.They stressed the meaning of students ' oral production,except Emily,one of the experienced teachers.They all asserted that peer-correction was more acceptable,and strongly disagreed that it was only the teachers' responsibility to perform the correction.3)The results reveal many instances when novice and experienced teachers' CF beliefs are reflected in their instructional practices.For example,most teachers stated that they used CF frequently,which was consistent with the large amount of CF activity observed in their classes.They all considered it was unnecessary to correct all of the students' spoken errors.According to their observational data,they actual y neglected some errors.Meanwhile,there were still some divergence s between novice and experienced teachers' beliefs and practices about CF.Some examples are illustrated as follows.Cathy and Shally thought that their CF focus would be phonological errors.However,it was observed that they provided the most CF following grammatical errors.Elise employed only two repetitions despite the fact that she expressed repetition strategy was the most effective.In addition,Emily stated that she seldom employed recast strategy,but the fact that recasts represented the highest percentage of Emily's CF was incongruent with her belief.As illustrated in four case studies,there is no absolute consistency or complete inconsistency between novice and experienced teachers' beliefs and their actual practice of CF.A trend emerged from the findings of this study that experienced teachers are more likely to implement their CF beliefs into practice.Perhaps because novice teachers' beliefs are still in the process of forming.On the other hand,experienced teachers' beliefs have become more embedded in their practices over time and they can verbalize the reasoning motivating their classroom practices clearly.