Saudi EFL learners’ preferences of oral corrective feedback: The case of female secondary-level students

Abstract

Identifying the most effective methods and techniques to correct EFL learners’ oral errors is crucial as it helps the learners notice the gaps between their interlanguage and the L2 forms without feeling discouraged from participating in interactional activities. The present study investigated Saudi EFL learners’ preferences for oral corrective feedback (OCF) in secondary school with a focus on educational track –namely, science and humanities tracks. A 30-item was completed by 15 Saudi female English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in the third year of secondary school from four different state schools in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia. The results reveal that the learners generally have a positive attitude towards the provision of OCF. While the learners highly prefer teacher feedback, they in general support peer feedback and self-correction. Moreover, they prefer the use of elicitation over recasts as it can prompt them to self-repair. With regard to OCF timing, the learners in both tracks favour delayed feedback. Notably, the learners prefer to get OCF when the error is likely to affect the comprehensibility of the utterance. As far as track is concerned, the results show that science-track learners have a more positive attitude towards peer feedback and self-correction than humanities-track learners. Interestingly, humanities-track learners have more tolerance towards recasts than their counterparts in the science-track. Similarly, the humanities-track learners were more lenient about leaving all spoken errors uncorrected compared with science-track learners. The implication highlights the importance of meshing teachers’ OCF practices with learners’ preferences.