Investigating English language learners' beliefs about oral corrective feedback at Chinese universities: a large-scale survey

摘要

This article reports on a large-scale survey study investigating EFL learners' beliefs about oral corrective feedback (CF). A 44-item questionnaire tapping into learners' beliefs about corrective feedback was administered to 2670 Chinese EFL learners. These learners were from 15 Chinese universities in 14 provinces and municipalities across the country, which were stratified in accordance with per capita GDP values. An exploratory factor analysis generated seven factors: general attitude toward CF, CF timing, output-prompting CF, uptake, input-providing CF, peer CF, and gravity of errors. The results indicate that participants had an overall positive attitude toward CF, and they showed more preferences for immediate CF over delayed CF, and output-prompting CF over input-providing CF. Additionally, learners were slightly positive about the efficacy of uptake and peer correction. Findings also suggest some consistency between the Chinese learners' CF beliefs and empirical SLA research about the effectiveness of error correction, as well as the variance of CF-related beliefs across educational contexts.