Exploring Native and Non-Native EFL Teachers' Oral Corrective Feedback Practices: An Observational Study

Commonly defined as L2 teachers' responses to learners' erroneous utterances, oral corrective feedback (OCF) is an interactional classroom phenomenon which frequently occurs in foreign language classes and has gained growing momentum in SLA research in recent years. However, how OCF preferences of English teachers vary in terms of their native-nonnative speaker status remains as an uncharted territory of inquiry specifically in an expanding-circle context. This study aims to reveal the differences between in-class OCF practices of native and non-native English-speaking teachers (NESTs & NNESTs) in Turkish EFL context and to explore the cross-cultural influences that might affect these practices. To these ends, structured classroom observations and interviews were conducted with seven NESTs and seven NNESTs. The findings of the observations showed that the NESTs' and NNESTs' in-class OCF practices differed considerably in terms of their tolerance of errors, preferred OCF types, the amount of OCF and different types of OCF to different types of errors. Moreover, the follow-up interview findings demonstrated some similar and different dispositions between the teacher groups concerning several dimensions (whether, how, when, and which errors should be corrected, and by whom) including the effect of teaching experience and teacher education on their OCF-giving patterns.