A Case Study Of A Successful Chinese EFL Teacher's Verbal Feedbacks In A Classroom Instructional Context

This study investigates successful teacher feedbacks in a Chinese EFL instructional context and its effect on Chinese EFL learner responses. The main questions addressed are: (1) What are the types of teacher feedback that could be offered by a successful Chinese EFL teacher? (2) How did the learners perceive and receive the teacher feedbacks in class? (3) What are the learners'preferences to each type of teacher feedback?The study chose a case of video-taped Comprehensive English classroom teaching as an object of investigation. The subjects involved were a successful university teacher who was a first prize winner in a provincial English Teaching Contest, and some of her students, who were English majors in their first-year university education. The methods employed in the study are video observation and interviews. In the video observation part, the teacher feedbacks were explored and described on the basis of the researcher's intensive and careful observation of the video-taped classroom teaching. The researcher also paid a few unannounced visits to the class to know about the teacher and her students. In the interview part, both the teacher and 23 of her students were interviewed for more detailed information about the teacher feedback under discussion. All the verbal interactions between the teacher and her students in class were transcribed into texts, and the responses to the interview questions were also recorded and transcribed.The major findings generated in the data analysis may be summarized as follows: Firstly, 126 identified teacher feedback were categorized into six types: simple approval, expansion, repetition, prompt, elicitation and explicit correction. Of all the types, simple approval was most frequently used by the teacher, indicating that this type of feedback is the first choice of the teacher, though it is not the most effective in language teaching since it is most likely to be used by the teacher as a strategy to keep the verbal interaction going on in class. By contrast, explicit correction was least used by the teacher, which suggests that explicit correction is not the best strategy at a good teacher's disposal that a teacher should use to promote the classroom interaction.Secondly, the analysis of the data from the interviews indicates that: (1) most of the students would like to or even were eager to have the teacher feedback, either positive or negative, to their responses in class. (2) simple approval was widely received by students of a lower proficiency level, but not by high-level ones, who assumed that too many instances of simple approval could not bring them a stronger sense of achievement in class, which more or less confirms the point mentioned earlier that simple approval is used by the teacher merely as a strategy of encouragement. (3) Repetition and prompt were most easily perceived by the students of both higher and lower levels, but repetition was most preferably received by lower-level students, possibly because repetition is an effective feedback to arouse their awareness of the points the teacher is trying to make. (4) Both higher- and lower-level students would have a varying degree of anxiety when they were explicitly corrected in the verbal interaction, implying the value of face preserving in the Chinese culture.Finally, of all the types of teacher feedback, the teacher tends to have preferences for simple approval, expansion, repetition and prompt. The frequency of expansion, repetition and prompt may be related to the nature of Comprehensive English, in which the teacher makes much effort in emphasizing the accuracy of linguistic forms. Explicit correction is a least preferred feedback, and one case of 23 interviews mentioned it as a most effective feedback, which explains why this feedback was rarely used by the teacher.Pedagogically, student-centered classroom teaching demands that a good teacher should be aware of the needs of the students when providing different kinds of feedback. A proper use or misuse of teacher feedback may make huge difference in promoting the classroom interaction. Further research may be made on non-verbal teacher feedbacks or the mixture of the verbals and the nonverbals.