Teacher and SHL Student Beliefs about Oral Corrective Feedback: Unmasking Its Underlying Values and Beliefs

Abstract

This study provides a critical discussion on oral corrective feedback (CF) in the Spanish heritage language context by analyzing the language ideologies of both teachers and students relating to this everyday pedagogical practice. Despite the undeniable relevance of oral CF within the SHL language classroom, it is an area mainly studied within the field of SLA and, thus, primarily grounded in cognitive perspectives of the individual L2 learner and their subsequent language development. Drawing on scholarship that has long contested the discrimination that U.S. Latinxs face at the macro, meso, and micro-levels of society, this study interrogates and presents the core beliefs and values that legitimize the underlying asymmetrical power relationships propagated by oral CF. As critical paradigms continue to gain currency in the field of SHL education (e.g., critical language awareness), unmasking the various ways by which monolingual ideologies operate within language education is key to developing pedagogy that promotes Spanish language maintenance and, ultimately, dismantling such structures of domination. This study focuses on exploring the ideologies about oral CF by asking: (1) What language ideologies are prevalent in relation to participants’ conceptualization of oral CF? and (2) What are the instructor’s goals for oral CF? To answer these questions, this study analyzes interview data of a language instructor (n = 1) and SHL learners (n = 4) in an elementary-level, mixed Spanish course at a Hispanic-serving community college. The results show how the instructor utilized oral CF as a mechanism to enact dominant ideologies regarding SHL learners’ non-prestige varieties, while simultaneously advocating for an approach to learners’ varieties based on appropriateness. The instructor grounded her corrective practices in beliefs and values regarding the “deficiency” of SHL learners’ cultures and social categories that she considered to be the root causes of the “problem” that SHL learners spoke non-prestige varieties of Spanish. This study sheds light on the need to reexamine current L2-based oral CF taxonomies and teaching principles that do not account for the wide-ranging ways that corrective feedback becomes entrenched in educators’ culturally shared ideologies of language, learning and the learners themselves, and as normalized by the programmatic context wherein such practices are embedded. Finally, the study concludes by proposing several guiding considerations based on CLA to develop reflective practices for pedagogues to promote a consciousness of the ideologically charged nature of CF within the SHL learning context.