THE VIEWS OF MALAYSIAN TEACHERS ON THE ROLE OF ORAL FEEDBACK IN SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHING

Feedback, both spoken and written, plays an important role in the teaching and learning of English. It provides insights into the teaching and learning process, particularly in relation to the interaction between the learners and the teachers. Literature has suggested many types of feedback used by teachers in correcting their students’ errors, in particular oral corrective feedback. Thus, the choice of the feedback types used by teachers during lessons reflects the teachers’ beliefs and experience of teaching and learning in their own context. In relation to this, a study was conducted to examine different views of secondary school teachers and students on corrective feedback on oral language. This study was undertaken in Malaysia, an ESL (English as a second language) context, in particular in which the teachers were non-native speakers of English. The study used a mixed-method of data collection and analysis. Questionnaires were used to examine the views and teaching practices of teachers in relation to the oral corrective feedback used in the classrooms. Interviews were conducted with individual teachers to examine in-depth the philosophical and pedagogical principles which affect the perceptions and used of oral corrective feedback in the teaching and learning of English in the ESL context. The respondents involved in this study were lower secondary school English teachers who varied in age and years of teaching experience. The findings suggested that teachers share certain views on issues pertaining to the use of oral corrective feedback during lessons on the basis of their beliefs and experience on the role of feedback in the teaching and learning of English. Oral corrective feedback is aimed at improving and developing students’ learning and acquiring of English, however this may not be the case in real teaching situation. This paper also includes discussions about the development of the questionnaire in term of its validity and research aims and objectives.