Theorizing EFL Teachers’ Perspectives and Rationales on Providing Corrective Feedback

Researchers condemn teachers by saying that tradition, rather than research findings, derive their practice while teachers condemn researchers by saying that their research findings are universal generalizations that fail in practice. To turn mutual distrust to mutual trust, this data-driven study aims at theorizing practice, rather than enlighten practice through theory-driven research. The theoretical sampling of twenty EFL teachers’ perspectives concerning corrective feedback, together with the rigorous coding schemes of grounded theory yielded some context-sensitive corrective feedback techniques: direct feedback; indirect feedback such as recast, providing an alternative, asking other students, pausing before the error, providing the rule, using the correct structure and showing surprise; feedback through other language skills including writing and listening; and no correction on cognitive, affective and information processing grounds. Moreover analysis uncovered a set of specifications on when, where, and why to use these techniques. Not only do the findings help practitioners get in-sights and improve their providing feedback, but also they help researchers modify their hypotheses before testing them through the quantitative research that aims at generalization.