An Appraisal of How Tanzanian Secondary School Teachers of English Use Oral Corrective Feedback Strategies in ELT

Abstract

This paper examines teachers’ classroom practices in providing oral corrective feedback to students in English language lessons, focusing on the procedures that teachers use in handling students’ spoken errors. Using Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory, the study looked into how teachers utilize different oral corrective feedback strategies in their lessons. Data collection was done through classroom observation and interviews conducted in two public secondary schools in Dar es Salaam City. The participants were teachers and students. Thirteen English language lessons were observed, recorded, transcribed, and analysed; and six English language teachers were interviewed. The results suggest that the teachers apply at least six techniques in handling students’ spoken errors, namely explicit correction, clarification requests, recasts, metalinguistic feedback, repetition, and corrective comments. Explicit correction was the most frequently used strategy, while corrective comments was the least frequently used. Lastly, the learners’ level of language proficiency dictated the teachers’ choice of the OCF strategy.