Effects of Different Corrective Feedback Types on Reducing Iranian Test-takers’ Speaking Anxiety: Lower- and Upper-intermediate Levels

Subject Areas :

Samin  Seyedebrahimi ¹ (English Department, Shahrekord Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrekord Iran)
Fariba  Rahimi Esfahani ² (English Department, Shahrekord Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrekord, Iran)
Mehrdad  Sepehri ³ (English Department, Shahrekord Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrekord, Iran)

Received: 2022-02-13 Accepted : 2022-04-15 Published : 2022-04-01

Keywords: Feedback, speaking anxiety, explicit correction,

Abstract :

The current study explored the effects of different feedback types on reducing Iranian test-takers’ speaking anxiety at the lower- and upper-intermediate levels. For this purpose, 90 male and female learners aged 21 to 45, who were preparing themselves to take the IELTS Mock test, were selected through a convenient sampling method and divided into lower-intermediate and upper-intermediate levels on the basis of the Oxford Placement Test (OPT) results. Then, they underwent ten treatment sessions of recast, explicit, metalinguistic, and clarification corrective feedback. To measure the anxiety in speaking performance, Chowdhury’s (2014) questionnaire was given to the participants once before treatment and once after the treatment. Then, the score of each learner was calculated and recorded for the data analysis. The obtained results revealed that there was a statistically significant difference among the feedback types regarding the participants’ speaking anxiety at the lower-intermediate as well as the upper-intermediate level. The implication of this finding is that teachers should constantly implement different types of corrective feedback in their classes to help students with their speaking anxiety problems.

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