UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ AND TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF SPEAKING CHALLENGES AND ORAL CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS

Abstract

This study investigates the speaking challenges and perceptions of university students and teachers towards corrective feedback in developing oral proficiency. It also explores teachers’ views on teaching speaking and correction practices in higher education settings. A total of 257 students completed a survey followed by in-depth interviews with eight English language teachers from the Languages Bureau at the Lebanese University. The survey findings reveal that most students face difficulties in pronunciation, grammatical structures, and vocabulary use when speaking English. Additional barriers mentioned by teachers included low exposure to the target language, L1 and French interference, instructional time constraints and the neglect of speaking skill in curricula and assessment. In fluency activities, both students and teachers agreed that corrective feedback should follow the task. In accuracy-based activities, the majority of students prefer teacher corrections after the tasks while teachers favored immediate recast and repetition fearing that students might copy the wrong forms. Regarding the source of feedback, nearly all students require teacher explicit corrections combined with explanations and favored self-correction over peer feedback. Generally, teachers made use of a variety of instructional strategies to improve speaking and reduce anxiety in more teacher-centered classrooms. Practical implications and recommendations for future research are also discussed.