Student teachers' beliefs on oral corrective feedback

Abstract

Corrective feedback (CF) is a topic that has always gotten teachers’ attention and that has raised a lot of discussions on the Second Language Acquisition Field. Ur (2009, pp. 242) defines feedback as “information that is given to the learner about his or her performance of a learning task, usually with the objective of improving this performance.” It is well known that Oral Corrective Feedback (OCF) in a foreign language classroom is an essential factor for language learning because, according to Platt and Brooks (1994 Apud Shrum and Gilsan, 2010), it helps students to make themselves understood and also in the development of strategies that help them to interact using the language. Despite of that, Lyster (2007) states that research has suggested that the use of CF is not a high priority factor for teachers. Taking into consideration the relation between theory and practice, CF’s importance and what student teachers might think about it, the questions that we aim to answer with this research are: (1) how OCF takes place in two different classroom settings, EFL and K-12, and (2) what are student teachers’ beliefs on it. For this research, two Letras-Inglês undergraduate student teachers had two of their classes observed and videotaped. Then, the two student teachers answered some questions related to the use of OCF. The results show that there were more occurrences of OCF strategies in the K-12 school setting than in the EFL course, being explicit feedback the most used strategy, what indicates that the student teachers tend to use explicit/direct strategies more than the implicit/indirect. Also, it suggests that the student teachers interviewed see recast as the most effective strategy, while they see explicit correction as the least effective strategy. Also, they believe that students should not be over corrected, because it could lead them to be upset or afraid of speak. On the contrary, both student teachers see explicit correction (the OCF strategy they most used) as one strategy that “put the student on the spot”. Lastly, both of them consider display students’ mistakes on the board as an effective strategy of correction, even when dealing with oral production. In conclusion, although OCF is considered an important factor in language teaching, student teachers might not feel prepared enough to deal with it inside the classroom. Such beliefs they might have about CF should be taken into consideration during the development of the programmes of the undergraduate teaching courses they are taking, since research has already shown that when student teachers beliefs are ignored, the programmes might be less effective at influencing these (KETTLE & SELLARS, 1996; WEINSTEIN, 1990 apud BORG, 2009).