Teacher ́s feedback and motivation in the English- as-a-foreign-language classroom

Abstract

The relationship between feedback and motivation has been analyzed in many studies throughout the years. The aim of this paper is to examine research on the impact of teacher´s feedback on student´s motivation in English as Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. In order to do so, we will look at some findings resulted from observational questions on corrective feedback in Secondary Education classrooms. This study exposes that the type of feedback given to students directly affects their motivation in learning the language in class. The results of our study, as with existing literature, show that individual correction and indirect feedback will produce positive effects on students. We focused our study on three classrooms at high school: 1st and 2nd of Educación Secundaria Obligatoria (ESO). There is a minimum difference in terms of students per classroom although they have the same background knowledge. Regarding the interest of students, they all study the same subjects with the same methodology. They are not still focused on a scientific or artistic profile. Another goal of this study is to determine how the type of feedback given to the students may influence their motivation in learning English as a foreign language. In this sense, we found that students with a low level of English showed a predisposition on being corrected by the teacher while students with a high level of the language were frustrated on being corrected rather than given them time to think about the error. The main conclusion deriving from our research is that provision of an adequate type of feedback has shown to benefit students´ motivation to their language acquisition.