Understanding oral corrective feedback in Chinese university EFL classrooms: a qualitative study of cognitive, affective, and relational processes

Abstract

Oral corrective feedback (OCF) is widely recognised as a key pedagogical mechanism in the development of second language speaking proficiency; however, existing research has largely examined OCF in controlled settings or focused on isolated feedback types, offering limited insight into how feedback is interpreted, negotiated, and enacted within authentic classroom interaction. Addressing this gap, this qualitative study examines how cognitive, social, and affective processes shape teachers’ and students’ experiences of feedback in Chinese university English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. Rather than treating OCF as a purely technical corrective move, the study conceptualises it as a relational and context-sensitive pedagogical process. Drawing on interactionist and sociocultural perspectives, the study investigates the perspectives of 12 university English teachers and 24 undergraduate students across fluency- and accuracy-oriented speaking tasks. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews, non-participant classroom observations, and stimulated-recall sessions, and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings indicate that OCF is understood not merely as a technical response to linguistic error but as a relational pedagogical practice embedded in task demands, classroom norms, and interpersonal considerations. Teachers emphasised the strategic calibration of timing, explicitness, and scaffolding to support noticing and self-repair, while students foregrounded relational sensitivity, emotional safety, and face protection as conditions for meaningful engagement with feedback. Three interrelated tensions were identified: negotiating explicit correction alongside affective comfort, managing face and hierarchical relations during public feedback, and orchestrating teacher, peer, self-, and technology-supported feedback within everyday classroom activity. Overall, the study demonstrates that the effectiveness of OCF emerges from the dynamic coordination of cognitive, affective, and interactional factors rather than from isolated feedback techniques. The study contributes to EFL pedagogy in Asian higher education by offering a reconceptualised understanding of OCF as a relational, affect-sensitive, and contextually mediated process, with implications for designing task-sensitive and learner-responsive feedback practices.