Oral corrective feedback in remote video-conferencing EFL classes

Abstract

Oral corrective feedback is of great significance in an EFL classroom as it can have a great impact on students’ acquisition of four language skills. A number of research has been conducted around this topic; however, the majority of them were conducted in face-to-face settings. Given the recent shift to online learning due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, it is of great importance to find out what types of oral corrective feedback are used in online video conferencing classes and what types work best resulting in uptake and repair. To answer those questions a mixed method study was conducted. The sampling procedure was purposive, and the participants were three groups of students from an English afterschool program in Yerevan and their teachers. The groups had pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper-intermediate proficiency levels of English. The instruments for data collection were observations and interviews. The data was analyzed deductively using pre-determined classification. The results showed that explicit correction, recasts and elicitation were the most frequently used oral corrective feedback strategies, while elicitation, repetition, explicit correction and metalinguistic feedback were the most effective types that resulted in repair. Moreover, teachers mentioned that their preferred feedback strategies were repetition, explicit correction, elicitation and metalinguistic feedback.