Oral Corrective Feedback Preferences in Iranian L2 Learners with Different Proficiency Levels

Abstract

As far as making errors is an indispensable part of L2 learning process, appropriate and pertinent corrective feedback (CF) is a significant medium for L2 teachers to prevent their learners' errors from getting fossilized and assist them progress along with their L2 learning process. There are various factors contributing to the efficacy of CF, but proficiency level is of paramount importance. In this study, various oral CF types preferred by L2 learners at intermediate, upper-intermediate, and advanced levels of proficiency were considered. For this purpose, 20 participants were selected for each level. Different types of oral CF were identified, and their distribution in relation to the proficiency levels of the learners was determined. After conducting chi-square tests and comparing the significance values with respect to their preferred CF types, it is observed that the most significant CF types among the intermediate participants were paralinguistic signals and clarification requests. Moreover, for the upper-intermediate participants, recasts and repetition were the most frequent and significant types of CF that assisted them to reformulate their utterances. Finally, with regard to the advanced participants, the results pointed out that as they became more proficient in terms of their linguistic threshold, they would show no significant positive or negative attitudes towards any certain type of CF for treating their errors. The findings suggest that L2 teachers should adjust CF types and correction techniques to their learners' proficiency levels and provide proper types of CF that can foster a more productive learning milieu to enhance learning quality and speaking ability.