EFL Students’ and Teachers’ Beliefs about Oral Corrective Feedback and the Role of Students’ Proficiency Levels

Oral corrective feedback (OCF) has emerged as a focal point of research in the realm of English language teaching and learning. However, the relationship between EFL teachers’ and students’ beliefs about OCF has not been thoroughly explored yet. Furthermore, it remains largely unclear whether EFL students at different proficiency levels viewed OCF differently. Thus, this study aims to fill these gaps by examining both EFL students’ and teachers’ OCF beliefs across four dimensions encompassing feedback efficacy, feedback timing, error types, and feedback types as well as investigating the influence of students’ proficiency levels on their OCF beliefs. The participants involved 248 EFL undergraduates at higher and lower proficiency levels and 20 EFL teachers at a Vietnamese university. Via validated questionnaires (for students only) and semi-structured interviews (for both students and teachers), it was found that both groups perceived OCF positively and had a desire for delayed feedback. These educational stakeholders also emphasized the importance of the corrections of major errors in speeches or those that hinder communication. For feedback types, although teachers and students leaned more toward implicit feedback, they also valued explicit feedback. Moreover, there were no significant differences in the four aspects of OCF beliefs between high-proficiency and low-proficiency students. The findings entail several implications for pedagogy in OCF practices and the expansion of this research domain.