Chapter 5. Teachers’ awareness and beliefs towards corrective feedback in L2 pragmatics

Abstract

Corrective feedback (CF) has been regarded as a complex phenomenon with cognitive, social and psychological dimensions influencing its effectiveness for language development. Despite the extensive research conducted on its impact on morphosyntactic aspects of the language, CF on pragmatic aspects has received scant attention. One possible reason may be related to the potential challenges that pragmatics itself represents as it is defined by choice. Thus, it is important to examine teachers’ beliefs towards the five key pedagogical decisions that influence the provision of CF (i.e. necessity, choice of corrector, timing, types and methods of CF). With that aim in mind, this qualitative study attempts to explore in-service secondary school English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ awareness and beliefs towards CF in general and in pragmatics. To this end, a questionnaire and a follow-up interview with the participants were used to get insights on this underexplored topic.