Beyond Immediate and Delayed Feedback: A Task-Adaptive Model of Oral Corrective Feedback Timing
Abstract
teachers' timing practices and students' preferences in Chinese university EFL classrooms. Adopting a sequential explanatory mixed-methods
design, it draws on questionnaires from 135 teachers and 372 students, semi-structured interviews, and 18 classroom observations across 3
Chinese universities. Quantitative results show teachers strongly prefer delayed correction, while students hold task-sensitive preferences
favoring immediate correction in form-focused activities and delayed feedback in fluency-oriented tasks. Observations reveal immediate
feedback correlates with higher observable learner uptake, and delayed feedback better preserves interactional flow. Qualitative findings indicate feedback timing is shaped by cognitive salience, affective mediation, and institutional constraints. Instead of a binary choice, the study
proposes a task-adaptive model where feedback timing is a context-dependent pedagogical decision. The findings enrich corrective feedback
research by emphasizing alignment between teacher practices and learner expectations, reconceptualizing OCF timing as a dynamic classroom
interaction component.
Keywords
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.70711/eer.v3i5.9364
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