EFL teachers’ L1 backgrounds, beliefs, and the characteristics of their corrective feedback

Abstract

Considering the importance of teachers’ performance in class as a variable which affects the efficacy of corrective feedback (CF), it has not necessarily received the attention it deserves in second language acquisition (SLA) research: While there are a number of studies that focus on the efficacy of CF strategies from learners’ standpoint, research that focuses on the provider of CF, i.e., the foreign language (FL) teacher, has not yet been done as extensively. The present study was conducted to examine how native speaker (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS) teachers differ in their provision of CF and to investigate whether the two types of teachers’ provision of CF is congruent with their perceptions and beliefs. The results show that the ability to match their beliefs with their actual CF provision seems to be affected by their L1 background. NS teachers tend not to provide abundant phonological CF due to their insensitivity to some phonological errors in learners’ utterances. NNS teachers tend not to have the ability to provide CF in general due to their lack of language proficiency. Finding ways to overcome teachers’ current weaknesses may be a prerequisite to enhancing the quality of education in Japan.