PERCEPTIONS OF ENGLISH INSTRUCTORS AND LEARNERS ABOUT CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK

Corrective feedback has always been popular in English as a foreign language (EFL) settings and its effectiveness in language learning has been widely debated. An increasing number of second language acquisition studies (SLA) indicate that there is a dilemma in the effectiveness of corrective feedback in terms of EFL instructors’ and learners’ perceptions. Although the effectiveness of corrective feedback is a point at issue, there is not much research related to investigating instructors’ and learner’ perceptions. It is the aim of this study to examine the perceptions of instructors and learners about corrective feedback in learning English as a foreign language (EFL). The findings of the study show that the instructors and learners seem to have almost similar ideas about corrective feedback. However, the instructors and learners seem to have one contradicting perspective that is about oral error correction: the instructors do not seem to favor oral correction all the time, but the learners do. Furthermore, the interviews display that while the instructors prefer non-direct feedback, the learners prefer direct and explicit feedback. Language instructors need to know what their learners expect in corrective feedback and to form a common understanding with their learners for increasing the effectiveness of corrective feedback.