A Study on Trainee Teachers’ Stated Beliefs and Their Pedagogical Practices of Oral Corrective Feedback in the Chinese as a Second Language Classroom

The aim of the present study is to explore how native Chinese trainee teachers reflect on their usages of oral corrective feedback in class and what their actual teaching practices are in Chinese as a second language (CSL) classroom. To this end, a mixed-methods approach was adopted in this study, including the questionnaire to explore teachers’ perceptions as well as classroom observation to understand teachers’ pedagogical practices during class. Fifteen trainee teachers from the same teacher training program in a university in China were identified and recruited to help complete the current research. The present study indicates that in the CSL context, teachers play an essential role in the language classroom and serve as the main resource of classroom feedback. When comparing trainee teachers’ stated beliefs to their teaching practices, some similarities could be identified between them, however, clear divergence was also noticeable in the present study. Compared to the previous studies on oral corrective feedback in ESL and EFL contexts, most of the findings in the current study could correspond to those outcomes. The implication emphasizes the importance of offering more support to trainee teachers to help them deal with the complex classroom context such as through teacher training programs. Further investigations on students’ perceptions of oral corrective feedback in class would also contribute to the understanding of oral corrective feedback in the CSL context.