Oral Corrective Feedback in Swedish Primary Schools

• Main Authors: Knutsson, Malin, Köster, Sandra
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för lärande och samhälle (LS) 2020
• Subjects: oral feedback; corrective feedback; oral feedback types; teachers' approach; students' reactions and responses to oral corrective feedback; Social Sciences; Samhällsvetenskap
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-28816

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers use different strategies to support language acquisition when teaching. This study focuses on one particular strategy: Oral Corrective Feedback (OCF). It is provided to support learners’ oral language skills, and takes numerous potential forms which can either be implemented implicitly and/or explicitly. According to many studies, recast is the type of OCF most commonly used by EFL teachers. Studies demonstrate however, that recast is the least effective approach for EFL learners’ uptake. The aim of this research study is to investigate how Swedish EFL teachers provide students with OCF. In addition, the intention is also to explore teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the usefulness of OCF for their skills development in English. The focus of this research study is on Swedish primary schools of grades 4-6. Two types of data-gathering methods were used in this study: interviews and observations. The results confirm that both explicit and implicit OCF was provided when observing the teachers’ approaches and strategies in classroom settings. Surprisingly, this research study reveals that recast was not favoured by the Swedish EFL teachers as they considered other types of OCF to be more beneficial to EFL classroom settings.