English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers can refine foreign language (FL) learners' linguistic accuracy using the oral corrective feedback (CF) technique. Many studies underlined the efficacy of different patterns of oral CF over the past two decades. There was little research examining oral CF perceptions to keep pace with the rapid developments in the domain. Very few researchers specifically explored their differences, even though several studies in the domain of second language acquisition (SLA) have examined English teachers' and FL learners' respective perceptions of oral CF techniques.
Although some researchers have investigated and compared English teachers' and L2 learners' perceptions of oral CF in the context of English as a second language (ESL) classrooms, to date there has been an insufficient examination of this issue in the EFL classrooms. To this end, this dissertation sought to amplify this research scope in the Chinese EFL classrooms, by employing 21-item questionnaires, classroom observations, and semi-structured interviews to explore English teachers' and learners' perceptions of oral CF techniques, to examine whether these differences influence their effectiveness and to investigate the main reasons for such perceptional differences.
A total of 96 Chinese EFL learners and 10 non-native English-speaking teachers in the university voluntarily participated in this investigation. Based on the responses to the questionnaires regarding their perceptions of oral CF, both 70% of teachers and 92% of Chinese EFL learners had positive attitudes toward the role of oral CF strategies, indicating that these learners were able to learn more by receiving their teachers' provision of oral CF. Some English teachers were accustomed to dealing with their learners' errors after completing speaking, while 55% of Chinese learners expected that their ill-formed utterances were corrected immediately when making errors. 96% of teachers tended to deal with learners' less serious or serious errors.
Nevertheless, this study also found that these teachers are rarely concerned with phonological, lexical, or pragmatic errors through oral CF techniques in oral English classes. With respect to teaching practices in the actual classroom observations, most teachers used recasts most frequently to correct Chinese learners' oral errors in grammar. Surprisingly, recasts simply lead to a 34.1% uptake rate. According to the responses to the questionnaire on oral CF, recasts and elicitation were considered as the two useful methods. In contrast, Chinese learners most favored receiving explicit feedback and elicitation in the questionnaire, for which they showed a higher uptake rate than for recasts in the English classroom. Undoubtedly, the perceptional differences between English teachers and Chinese learners may lead to the effectiveness of oral CF techniques.
Furthermore, the semi-structured interviews also substantiated the primary reasons for the differences between teachers' and learners' perceptions of oral CF techniques. Due to the restricted class time, heavy pedagogical tasks, conventional teaching modes, learners' distinct personalities, and learners' English proficiency levels, EFL teachers cannot involve in learners' each oral errors and direct their attention to the grammatical errors. However, Chinese learners wished to receive more correction than their teachers considered providing and were not willing to receive the same method of oral CF to address their erroneous errors.
The present study provided sufficient evidence to help more English teachers to understand learners' diverse requirements for oral CF so that these teachers can be conscious of considering learners' expectations when choosing oral CF. As a pedagogical implication, this dissertation suggests that English teachers are encouraged to employ diversified patterns of error corrections to rectify learners' oral errors and raise their awareness of the role of oral CF techniques. More importantly, learners' potential demands for oral CF techniques to be entirely understood will obtain better teaching achievements.