Beliefs about oral corrective feedback in an Argentinean EFL university classroom

Abstract

Beliefs about oral corrective feedback (OCF) are essential components in the EFL classroom, especially when learning the speaking skill since teachers have to strike a delicate balance between the provision of OCF without negatively affecting students' emotions. During the last years, many scholars have devoted great attention to the influence of affective factors in the learning of foreign languages. Among these factors, beliefs held by teachers and students have proved to impact significantly on the processes of teaching and learning a foreign language. The aims of this paper are: to describe the beliefs held by an Argentinian EFL teacher about OCF and to describe how her beliefs might shape this teacher's classroom practices regarding the provision of OCF at a specific context. A qualitative approach was adopted, and data was collected by means of videotaped classroom observations, teacher stimulated recall interviews and a semi-structured teacher interview. The results showed that the teacher's beliefs and her classroom actions were not always congruent, especially when she was faced with an ambiguous situation. In the end, the beliefs that had stronger connections to emotions were the ones enacted in her classroom practices.

Three perspectives on the role of teacher beliefs in the language classroom

“…However, since the inclusion of the beliefs professed in the prior interview contributes to the meaningfulness of the teachers' dynamic classroom choices, I see no reason to assume that these beliefs have changed in any major ways. Furthermore, as pointed out by previous research (Centeno & Ponce, 2019;Woods, 2003), the beliefs that teachers enact in the classroom may not be fully conscious in the sense that a teacher or any other person does what seems right and meaningful in any situation without necessarily being able to explicate the full range of values and beliefs influencing any spontaneous choice, hence even if a follow-up interview had been possible, it might not have contributed any further to the explanation of these classroom choices.…”

“…The scaffolding and pre-emption simultaneously seem to aim for a low degree of student frustration and may thus be understood to enact another belief: that learning should be pleasant (rather than frustrating). This is reminiscent of Centeno and Ponce (2019) who find beliefs related to students' emotions (establishing positive rather than negative emotions) enacted by the teacher in their study.…”

“…The next section interprets the practice observed as enactments of teacher beliefs (Borg, 2018;Centeno & Ponce, 2019;Woods, 2003). In this section, I draw out the most salient characteristics of each teacher's implementation of the teaching activity and interpret these reflexively (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009) by considering which beliefs could meaningfully be attributed to the teachers in light of this practice.…”

“…He argues that simplistic conceptualizations and research designs tend to dismiss this complexity. To avoid this, one may consider beliefs to be dynamic constructs organised into networks and temporally and socially situated (Andrews & Yin, 2018;Borg, 2018;Centeno & Ponce, 2019;Li, 2013) and recognise that the description of such dynamic and situated constructs cannot rest solely on the prevalent method of eliciting beliefs in settings removed from the classroom.…”

“…Borg, 2003Borg, , 2006Borg, , 2018. They provide an important perspective on the teacher's ideas on an abstract level, although they have been found often not to match what the same teachers do in the classroom (Borg, 2018;Centeno & Ponce, 2019;Skott, 2015), suggesting that this perspective cannot stand alone (Li, 2013).…”