Student Perspectives on Oral Corrective Feedback: Development and Validation of a Scenario-Based Scale
Abstract
Introduction: Oral corrective feedback (OCF) is widely recognized as crucial for second language learning, yet its effectiveness depends significantly on learners' receptivity and beliefs. Existing instruments for measuring OCF beliefs face methodological limitations: they rely on abstract, theory-driven terminology that may be misinterpreted by learners, impose researcher-generated factor structures that may not reflect authentic learner perspectives, and carry culture-bound interpretive burdens that limit cross-cultural comparability.
Purpose: This study develops and validates a scenario-based instrument for measuring learner beliefs about OCF that prioritizes accessibility and ecological validity by presenting concrete classroom situations rather than abstract terminology. The two-phase validation approach employs exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to identify how learners naturally organize their beliefs, followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to validate the discovered structure.
Method: A 50-item scenario-based questionnaire was developed through expert review and pilot testing, then administered to 668 B2-level English learners in a Turkish university preparatory program. The sample was randomly split: EFA was conducted on the first subsample (n = 334) using principal axis factoring with oblimin rotation, and CFA was performed on the holdout sample (n = 334) to validate the factor structure.
Results: EFA identified a six-factor structure explaining 61.4% of variance: Affective Response to Correction (strongest dimension, α = .85), OCF Type Preferences (α = .87), Correction Timing Preferences (α = .81), Context-Sensitive Correction (α = .79), Correction Source Preferences (α = .72), and OCF Uptake and Response (α = .76). CFA confirmed the six-factor solution with acceptable fit indices (CFI = .91, TLI = .90, RMSEA = .06, SRMR = .07). Notably, learners organized correction types by experiential familiarity rather than theoretical distinctions (input-providing vs. output-prompting), and affective considerations emerged as central rather than peripheral to belief systems.
Conclusion: The scenario-based approach yields accessible items that reduce culture-bound interpretive burden and enhance cross-cultural comparability. The identified dimensions—affect, type, timing, context, source, and uptake—map onto decision points common to EFL/ESL classrooms globally, offering a scalable measurement model for comparative research across educational systems. Findings encourage pedagogy that is adaptable to context, sensitive to affect, and aligned with how learners actually experience correction. Future research should test measurement invariance across diverse cultural and linguistic settings to establish international applicability.
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