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

Abstract

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 language institutes and 39 Iranian EFL teachers from different schools in Shiraz, Iran participated in the study. The Questionnaire for Corrective Feedback Approaches (QCFAs) was used as the instrument in this study. The questionnaire consisted of five different approaches of error correction: repetition, recast, elicitation, explicit correction, clarification, and request. In order to compare the preferred corrective feedback perceived by the institute instructors and school teachers, the researchers ran the Mann-Whitney’s U test. The results revealed that the school teachers preferred the repetition approach most frequently, followed by clarification request, elicitation, explicit correction, and recast. On the other hand, the institute instructors chose the recast approach, clarification request approach, elicitation, explicit correction, and repetition in the order of their preference for error correction. The findings also showed that the school teachers significantly preferred the explicit correction and repetition more than private (institute) teachers.