THE EFFECT OF CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK STRATEGIES ON IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS’ LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Providing corrective feedback has been a traditional pedagogical practice in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes. Corrective feedback permits second language learners to develop their ability to use the target language appropriately. This study aimed at investigating the effect of different types of corrective feedback on Iranian EFL learnersʹ language development. It investigated different types of corrective feedback strategies used by language teachers and examined the effect of corrective feedback strategies on learners’ overall language development. The participants of the study were 4 language teachers who were selected among language teachers at a language institute in Shiraz and 25 EFL learners who had enrolled at the same language institute. Data for this study were collected through semi-structured interviews with language teachers and observations of the learnersʹ performance in class during 10 instructional sessions. The results indicated that explicit correction, recast, clarification request, metalinguistic feedback, repetition, elicitation and nonverbal signals were the main feedback strategies employed by the teachers and attended to by the learners. The results also revealed that different corrective feedback strategies can improve EFL learners output based on the nature of errors produced. Findings have implication for language teachers in that explicit error correction techniques can enhance language learning because they are better noticed by the learners.