Indonesian EFL students’ and teachers’ beliefs, preferences and practices of oral corrective feedback in the classroom context: a sociocultural perspective

Abstract

This research aims to explore EFL students’ and teachers’ beliefs, preferences and practices of oral corrective feedback (OCF) in English classroom interaction at state Islamic senior high schools in Lampung Province, Indonesia. From a Sociocultural Theory (SCT) perspective, this study seeks to investigate the extent of congruences between students’ and teachers’ beliefs of OCF, teachers’ beliefs and teachers’ practices of OCF and students’ preferences and teachers’ practices of OCF.

Using a mixed-methods approach, questionnaire data were collected from 54 teachers and 444 students with proportionate distribution of gender and group year. The five-point Likert scale questionnaires were designed to investigate teachers’ beliefs of OCF and to examine students’ beliefs of OCF and students’ preferences for OCF. Qualitative data were collected from classroom observations, individual teacher interviews and student focus groups. These multiple datasets were analysed quantitatively using descriptive statistics and t-tests and qualitatively using thematic analysis.

The study of beliefs and preferences reveals that students and teachers favour OCF provision with delayed feedback, yet in practice teachers provided more immediate feedback. Further incongruence is evident with students’ favouring feedback on vocabulary errors, whereas teachers claim to prioritise grammatical errors. In practice, however teachers respond more to pronunciation errors. Students’ and teachers’ reported beliefs show that peer feedback is considered more useful for language learning. Nonetheless, students indicate a preference for teacher feedback, and teachers’ practice demonstrably favours teacher feedback over peer feedback. Students and teachers report a preference for negotiated feedback, but in practice teachers mostly used clarification request.

Drawing on Vygotskian understandings of development in interaction, this research shows the potential for better aligning teachers’ and students’ classroom interactions to promote students’ L2 development. Through classroom social interactions, mediation in the form of OCF can be provided to scaffold students’ linguistic cognition to further develop self-regulation and manage the linguistic features they are struggling with.


Thesis is embargoed until 31 July 2028.

Date of Award	Jul 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Sponsors	Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education (Lembaga Pengelola Dana Pendidikan/LPDP)
Supervisor	Aisling O'Boyle (Supervisor) & Ibrar Bhatt (Supervisor)