Oral and Written Teacher Feedback in an English as a Foreign Language Classroom in Sweden

Abstract: When teaching English as a foreign language (EFL), teachers use feedback in order to help students to improve their English skills. They can use both oral and written feedback to encourage students to make progress. Oral and written feedback play a significant role in second language acquisition, and this study could raise teachers' awareness of the different feedback strategies that can be employed in EFL classrooms. This could benefit their teaching performance and students’ learning. This study aims to examine the different types of oral and written feedback used in the EFL classroom, as well as teachers’ own perceptions of feedback. The approach used to conduct this study was both quantitative and qualitative. Three types of data material were collected in a secondary school (grades 7-9) for the analysis: three secondary school teachers were interviewed; their English lessons were observed; and their feedback on student essays was collected. The material collected was used in the analysis, which indicated that the teachers used different types of feedback. The most frequent oral feedback types used were recast, elicitation, and praise. However, the teachers employed different strategies regarding to how they provide this feedback. Two of the teachers provided feedback in the traditional way by using corrective types of feedback frequently, while one teacher chose not to correct students too often and instead encouraged them by giving them praise. The evaluation of different feedback types performed in this study suggests that recast as an implicit feedback type provided orally could be more effective in a communicative classroom setting, as it does not interrupt the communicative flow. In writing, on the other hand, explicit feedback combined with face-to-face sessions could lead to better results. It would be interesting to investigate in further research the effects of different oral and written feedback types.