Enhancing Young EFL Learners’ Grammar Development Through Oral Corrective Feedback in Focus-on-Form Instruction
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Despite the ongoing debate surrounding oral corrective feedback (CF), recent studies emphasize CF’s pedagogical value in foreign/second language teaching, as it informs learners about the accuracy of their utterances and helps increase their awareness of language forms. Viewing CF as a classroom-based instructional strategy for supporting language development, this study examined the effects of different types of oral CF (recasts, explicit correction, and metalinguistic feedback) on young learners’ grammar acquisition within Focus-on-Form (FonF) instruction in an EFL context. The study involved 88 fifth-grade students, aged 11–12, who were assigned to three experimental groups, each receiving one type of oral CF during FonF instruction, and a control group that received FonF instruction without feedback. Data were collected through oral production and scenario description tasks administered as pre-tests, immediate post-tests, and delayed post-tests. The instructional phase included approximately 10.7 h of treatment, and the assessment phase included approximately 15 h of testing. All classroom interactions and test recordings were transcribed and quantitatively analyzed. The results showed that oral CF statistically significantly enhanced young learners’ grammar acquisition compared to no oral feedback. Among the feedback types, explicit correction showed a significant advantage over the other feedback conditions in both immediate and delayed-test performance; however, this advantage was not consistent across all assessment tasks. These findings also highlight the pedagogical value of integrating oral CF into FonF instruction as an evidence-based classroom practice for promoting grammar acquisition and language development in young learner EFL classrooms.
Source: Education Sciences
Authors: Ali Göksu, Hacer Hande Uysal
Institutions: Maastricht University, Hacettepe University
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,172
OpenAlex ID: W7211953352