Participants and research context
The participants were enrolled in an asynchronous online upper-intermediate English language course (B2.2) at the Institut Obert de Catalunya, based on continuous assessment with optional synchronous online speaking classes. Students sit for an exam at the end of the course and receive the B2 certificate of English upon passing the exam. Students at this level can understand the main ideas of a text; understand spoken language, live or broadcast; and understand texts with a broad reading vocabulary and large degree of autonomy (Council of Europe, 2001).
Students were invited to participate in the research through the publication of a message on the notice board in the Learning Management System (LMS) of the course. A total of 88 responded to the initial questionnaire, thus confirming their consent to participating in the research. Most of the participants were women (66%) and all the students were older than 25 with previous online learning experience. In the second stage of our research, three studies were carried out in which an optional activity was offered to practise a specific aspect of the pronunciation of English which was key to the students’ pronunciation competence. Each study was carried out in different semesters: Study 1 (first semester in 2018–2019; from October to January); Study 2 (second semester 2018–2019; from February to June); and Study 3 (second semester 2019–2020; from February to June). Each study approximately took four weeks. Six students completed the optional activity for Study 1, three in Study 2 and 18 in Study 3.
These were the actual participants in the research presented in this article. Although the three studies were consecutive, no student repeated the experience.
Due to the optional nature of the activity, participation was low but enough to collect data to answer the research question for our present research. Even though the teacher and staff encouraged participation as much as possible, no attempts were made to recruit a minimum number of participants. In contrast with how participants are recruited in experimental studies, they were neither remunerated nor compensated. They need to be strongly motivated to participate in a study that continues over a period of time and requires extra effort (Khatamian-Far, 2018). It can be argued that student participation was largely self-directed.
Data collection and analysis
Prior to the optional activities and in order to identify anxious students as well as their preferences for Corrective Feedback strategies, two questionnaires were employed, which were joined in an online questionnaire (Google Form) in order to facilitate its administration. Both of them were translated into Catalan, which is the official language of the institution, and underwent a series of procedures such as back translation in order to guarantee its linguistic equivalence. The two questionnaires were:
Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS; adapted from Horwitz et al., 1986). It was used in the initial stage of the study as a measure of the students’ specific anxiety reaction towards the learning of a foreign language in an online setting. This scale consists of 33 items worded as a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from “strongly agree” (5 points) to “strongly disagree”. It was designed to assess the degree to which learners feel anxious about learning during English class, including the dimensions of Comfortableness in using English inside and outside the classroom; Communication apprehension; Speech anxiety; Fear of failing the class; and Negative attitudes toward learning English. In our current sample, the items pertaining to Communication apprehension, Speech anxiety, and Negative attitudes toward learning English were best described by a single anxiety factor, whose alpha for internal consistency was 0.861. The Comfortableness with the foreign language factor was 0.647. Inasmuch as the internal consistency of this factor was marginal, we included these data for heuristic value only given their substantive importance. The results should be interpreted with caution.
Corrective Feedback Belief Scale (CFBS) (adapted from Fukuda, 2004). This instrument collects the beliefs students have on the feedback received when speaking in a foreign language. There were 22 items which were aimed at the exploration of students’ judgments about the giving and receiving of spoken error correction, frequency of giving and receiving spoken error correction, time of spoken error correction, types of errors which need to be corrected, types of spoken error correction as well as sources for providing spoken error correction, and finally specific CF methods. Each of the above-mentioned items in the questionnaire were designed based on a 5-point-Likert-scale. The alpha reliabilities for CFBS in the present study were 0.749. This scale was administered in the initial stage of the research to the 88 students who expressed willingness to participate in this study.
Procedure
In order to identify anxious and non-anxious participants in the whole group (N = 88), a cluster analysis was performed. More specifically, in this study we applied the two-step clustering and hierarchical clustering with squared Euclidean distances. The respondents were clustered based on the variable Anxiety, yielding two clearly distinct groups (F = 130.72; p = 0.000). Finally, 58 participants were grouped into the first cluster group, characterised by low scores (M = 30.1, SD = 4.8), and 30 (34%) into the second cluster group, characterised by high scores (M = 75.7, SD = 11.7).
Significant correlations allowed us to design a Corrective Feedback Strategy for anxious and non-anxious students, which consisted of what corrective feedback method is used and when it is applied. As far as methods of CF are concerned, anxious students showed a significant correlation with Elicitation (r = 0.3, p < 0.05) whilst non-anxious students preferred Explicit correction (r = 0.28, p < 0.05).
As previously mentioned, out of the total of students who answered the initial questionnaire, six were recruited for Study 1, three for Study 2 and 18 for Study 3. Students were classified into anxious vs. non-anxious by means of the two-step clustering and hierarchical clustering with squared Euclidean distances. Out of the total number of participants, 15 were classified in the anxious profile (one in Study 1, three in Study 2 and 11 in Study 3). Analyses were made using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (version 20.0 for Windows). This specific result allowed us to continue with our feedback which was carefully designed for a specific anxiety profile.
Pronunciation targets
After answering the questionnaire, students were invited to do the pronunciation activity in a forum specifically created in the LMS of the course. The two pronunciation targets selected for the study are the “ed” inflection (Studies 1, 2 and 3) and the vowel in “sir” (Studies 2 and 3). Following is the presentation of the linguistic material employed in the activity in each of the studies.
Study 1: the “ed” inflection
In study 1 the pronunciation target was the “ed” inflection. The participants were first asked to watch a video with the explanation about how to pronounce the “ed” in English. Then students had to narrate a series of events in the life of a person (Mr. Brown), using the prompts in the task (see Appendix 1). While narrating, students had to video record themselves. Finally, students had to post the video in the forum, for which the course tutor provided feedback in video format and posted it to the forum as a reply (Fig. 1).
The video feedback was created using Edpuzzle (https://edpuzzle.com/) and included the student’s production with a brief introduction to the task. Also, correction feedback was embedded throughout the video, and further instructions at the end of the video were included, all of which recorded in audio format by the tutor. See Fig. 2 for an example.
Students were asked to do the same task twice (Try 1 and Try 2) and received feedback for each one of them. The feedback for Try 1 was created using Edpuzzle as already mentioned. The student’s video was played and stopped whenever a target sound was pronounced, at which point corrective feedback was delivered by the tutor while all of it was being recorded. In order to provide feedback for Try 2, a screencast session showing the tutor’s face was recorded (https://screencast-o-matic.com/) giving corrective feedback for each pronunciation target without playing the student’s video.
Studies 2 and 3: the “ed” inflection and the vowel in “sir”
In Studies 2 and 3 the pronunciation targets were the “ed” inflection as well as the vowel in “sir”. Participants were invited to do the task (Mr. Brown) but this time without giving them any theory previously in order to obtain a more realistic picture of the student’s starting point. The vowel in “sir” had not been included in Study 1 (see Appendix 1), during which the tutor detected the need for including this specific vowel in future iterations of the study since it proved to be a difficult sound target for the students and a source of communicative misunderstanding.
In both studies, average preparation time of the video feedback was approximately 10 min, which was significantly reduced after a few times of repeating the same procedure. All the feedback provision was recorded by means of screencasting software (https://www.apowersoft.es), showing both the student’s video and the task simultaneously on the screen. The tutor’s face was not shown in any of the recordings. Corrective feedback for each pronunciation target was provided whenever it was pronounced by the student. At which point, the tutor would stop the student’s video and give corrective feedback.
Just as in Study 1, students were asked to do the same task twice (Try 1 and Try 2) and they received video feedback from their tutor for both tries. Figure 3 summarises the procedure of the pronunciation activity.
Once the students completed the activity, they were contacted for an interview with the course tutor. The semi-structured interview was adopted in order to allow for instances when further exploration of the student’s reaction to video feedback was required.