Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between novice ESL teachers' beliefs about corrective feedback and their instructional practices. Ninety-nine teachers-in-training, with little or no teaching experience, completed a questionnaire seeking information about their teaching beliefs in general and their beliefs about corrective feedback, in particular. To see whether beliefs affected classroom performance, ten of these teachers watched videotape scenarios illustrating different language error types and indicated whether and how they would correct them. Later, they were videotaped teaching an authentic ESL class. The results indicate both consistency and inconsistency in the relationship. While the inconsistency was apparent in that the teachers corrected fewer errors in the classroom than they said they would, the consistency was noted in the same type of corrective techniques (regular and interrogative recasts) the teachers used with the videotaped scenarios as well as in the actual classroom. Complexities of the second language classroom and the challenge of integrating the novice teachers' technical and practical knowledge due to inexperience were suggested as possible reasons for the inconsistency. The consistency in the choice of corrective strategies is argued to be weak for it stems from the participants' limited knowledge about corrective feedback as well as the fact that they behave more as native-speaking interlocutors than as classroom teachers. Education and additional teaching experience are likely to bridge the gap of inconsistency between these teachers' stated beliefs and instructional practices.