DIGITAL LIBRARY
CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK STRATEGIES AND LEARNERS AND TEACHERS’ PREFERENCES
1 Islamic Azad University - Roudehen Branch (IRAN)
2 Islamic Azad University - Shahre Ghods Branch (IRAN)
About this paper:
Appears in: ICERI2010 Proceedings
Publication year: 2010
Pages: 6571-6579
ISBN: 978-84-614-2439-9
ISSN: 2340-1095
Conference name: 3rd International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation
Dates: 15-17 November, 2010
Location: Madrid, Spain
Abstract:
Giving students corrective feedback (CF) is one of the most time-consuming tasks that teachers experience in their classes. Upon receiving the written piece that the students have produced, teachers start correcting the papers using different strategies. However, most educators are not quite aware of their students’ attitude towards the way they treat their students’ written piece. Another factor missing in the bulk of the studies carried out thus far, is that they are void of the reasons why students prefer to be corrected, the way they claim is preferable to them. Among others, the CF typology put forward by Ellis (2009) provides an all-encompassing one in that it has all the feedback strategies that teachers could employ while giving CF. This list mentions six different strategies for providing corrective feedback and includes direct CF, indirect CF, Metalinguistic CF, focused and unfocused CF, electronic feedback, and reformulation. The purpose of this study was to find out how the students felt about CF, why they felt to be corrected that way, and finally how and why the teachers felt about different types of CF. To this end, the researchers employed an attitudinal survey, which devised based on the typology proposed by Ellis (2009), and conferencing to find out what the learners’ preferences towards CF are and why they wish to be corrected in the way they said. To find out what the answers to the research questions were, 92 students studying at two different English language schools in Tehran were given the questionnaire and twenty five of them took part in conferencing sessions to investigate the reasons for their choices. The same attitudinal questionnaire was then administered to some 12 teachers and rather than conferencing, the researchers interviewed the teachers’ so as to learn about the reason or reasons why they thought a type of CF was more fruitful. The findings suggest some match and mismatch between what the teachers think and how their students feel in terms of CF.
Keywords:
Corrective feedback, Strategy, Preference.