Educational Context and ELT Teachers’ Corrective Feedback Preference: Public and Private School Teachers in Focus

This study investigated the possible relationship between educational context and English Language Teaching (ELT)teachers’ corrective feedback preference. To this end, 42 Iranian EEFL teachers from some private languageinstitutes and 39 Iranian EFL teachers from different schools in Shiraz, Iran participated in the study. TheQuestionnaire for Corrective Feedback Approaches (QCFAs) was used as the instrument in this study. Thequestionnaire consisted of five different approaches of error correction: repetition, recast, elicitation, explicitcorrection, clarification, and request. In order to compare the preferred corrective feedback perceived by the instituteinstructors and school teachers, the researchers ran the Mann-Whitney’s U test. The results revealed that the schoolteachers preferred the repetition approach most frequently, followed by clarification request, elicitation, explicitcorrection, and recast. On the other hand, the institute instructors chose the recast approach, clarification requestapproach, elicitation, explicit correction, and repetition in the order of their preference for error correction. Thefindings also showed that the school teachers significantly preferred the explicit correction and repetition more thanprivate (institute) teachers.

Keywords:

corrective feedback , educational context , Iranian EFL teachers