EFL Students’ Attitudes to Oral Corrective Feedback in Two Different Contexts: Spain Versus Algeria

Background: Although oral corrective feedback (OCF) has been shown to benefit second language acquisition, relatively few studies have examined students’ attitudes toward it, which may impact on its effectiveness. Moreover, even though students’ attitudes to language learning can depend on different variables, such as students’ level or cultural background, very few studies have looked at the possible impact of such variables on students’ attitudes to OCF. Even fewer studies have focused on affective responses to OCF and hardly any have included non-WEIRD populations. Method: To fill these gaps, the present study compared students’ attitudes to OCF, as well as their affective responses to OCF, in two contrasting EFL higher-education settings with different L2 teaching traditions, by means of a cross-sectional Likert-type questionnaire: 213 Spanish and 261 Algerian EFL students at the university level. Descriptive statistics in the form of percentages of agreement and disagreement were calculated, and chi-square tests of independence were carried out to investigate possible differences in attitudes. Results: Contrary to previous findings that cultural background only appears to have a minor effect on students’ attitudes to OCF, we found significant differences between Spanish and Algerian students’ attitudes for several aspects of OCF, such as frequency, error type, OCF-type and affective responses to OCF. For instance, although most students expressed a wish to receive as much OCF as possible, there were more Algerian students who preferred to be corrected only in certain cases. With regard to OCF types, the majority of students in both contexts expressed a preference for metalinguistic feedback, but Algerian students were more positive about recasts. Conclusion: Given these observed differences, we cannot expect students from all contexts to have similar beliefs about OCF. Teachers are thus advised to discuss OCF with their students in order to avoid mismatches between students’ beliefs and teachers’ practices, as this can negatively affect the learning process. This study sheds light on the beliefs about OCF of students from different backgrounds, including an underrepresented, non-Western population, i.e., Algerian EFL students. It also highlights a need to further explore the possible reasons behind the observed differences in attitudes.