High school students’ attitudes toward teacher corrective feedback on grammatical errors

Abstract

For decades, various studies have been conducted to investigate the attitudes of students toward different types of teacher corrective feedback in order to conclude the appropriate strategies to improve grammatical accuracy in English (as a foreign language) of students. To add to more venues for this, the present study was conducted at Nguyen Viet Dung high school in Can Tho city, Vietnam with the purposes of exploring (1) students’ experiences and preferences on teacher direct and indirect corrective feedback, (2) the effects of teacher corrective feedback on grammatical errors and (3) students’ suggestions on future strategies of corrective feedback. Quantitative analysis was employed for data collection. A total of 50 eleventh-grade students participated in the research. Statistical analysis based on SPSS program revealed that (1) the students had a positive attitude toward corrective feedback and preferred direct to indirect corrective feedback, and that (2) both teacher direct and indirect corrective feedback were significantly effective in improving students’ grammatical accuracy. Also, the participants relatively agreed with the current teacher corrective feedback, thus they did not want their teacher to change into other feedback strategies; moreover, they were fond of being supported by direct corrective feedback in the future. Based on the research issues, pedagogical implications and possible recommendations for future research were also addressed.