An Investigative Study of ESL Teachers’ and Students’ Attitudes towards Corrective Feedback

Abstract

The study aims to analyze the students’ and teachers’ attitudes towards teachers’ corrective feedback on the language errors of ESL students. The present study also analyzed the students’ attitudes on the basis of their gender and educational background. Teachers’ attitudes with respect to their teaching experienced explored. The population of this study is 200 students (121 males and 79 females) and 12 ESL teachers (2 males and 10 females). The participants are the undergraduate students and the ESL teachers of the COMSATS Institute of Information and Technology Lahore. In the study four instruments are used to achieve the objectives of the study: 1) Teachers’ questionnaire; 2) Students’ questionnaire; 3) Teachers’ interviews and 4) Students’ interview. The analysis of the data shows that teachers and students have positive attitudes towards the corrective feedback of teachers on the students’ language errors. The results reveal that students and teachers considered the feedback necessary for the effective learning. The teachers’ corrective feedback is a very significant technique to improve the students’ second language speaking and writing. A t-test analysis indicates no significant difference between the attitudes of students and teachers towards the corrective feedback on the basis of their gender and educational background. To investigate the impact of teachers’ language teaching experience on their attitude to corrective feedback, t-test analysis is used. The findings reveal no significance difference between the teachers’ attitudes with respect to their language teaching experience.