Perception of Written Corrective Feedback
Description
This study examines the EFL teachers' and students' perceptions of the effectiveness of written corrective feedback (WCF) in the EFL context. The data was collected from 104 male and female university students and 11 professors in Oman. Two questionnaires, one for students and one for professors were used to collect quantitative data and some qualitative data. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the quantitative data, and thematic analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. The Omani EFL learners and their teachers agree on the importance of providing WCF to enhance English language learning. They prefer a focus on a group of categories of errors rather than flooding the students with feedback on all types of errors. Unlike previous research, the EFL students and their teachers do not solely prioritize accuracy issues, over content-focused feedback. The study highlights that student-teacher engagement with feedback via discussion and oral feedback scaffolding strategies are essential pedagogical practices to maximize WCF uptake. The study confirms previous research findings that WCF can be better understood ecologically by considering the individual, situational, and methodological variables
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This study aims to investigate the learner variable of students’ perception and preference for WCF and the methodological variable of teachers’ preference for WCF in the Omani EFL context. This study adopted Amrhein & Nassaji’s (2010) two parallel questionnaires to collect data about the teachers’ and students’ perceptions. However, the student questionnaire was expanded to include questions from Chen et al.’s (2016) questionnaire about the student’s overall perception of WCF and the type of WCF. Considering that the data were collected in the semester immediately following the online teaching and learning (henceforth, OTL) of COVID-19 in Fall 2022, most of the WCF students received over the past two years was provided online. Their recent history of WCF online provision might had an impact on their perception of WCF immediately after the OTL of COVID-19. Therefore, a new theme about the overall perception of the effectiveness of WCF during COVID-19 OTL as a situational variable was added to both questionnaires. The two questionnaires for the teachers and the students contain the same themes: overall perception of the effectiveness of WCF, types of WCF, amount of WCF, focus of WCF, and online WCF. In terms of overall structure, both questionnaires have the same themes with close-ended followed by open-ended questions to collect more insightful data. Close-ended questions like yes-no questions, Likert-scale items, and multiple-choice questions were used to collect the quantitative data as they can be easily quantified and analyzed. Open-ended questions following the close-ended questions were used to collect qualitative data explaining the reasons for the choices of the participants. Each questionnaire contains about 21 statements.