Metacognitive Instruction and Oral Corrective Feedback: Impacts on Metacognitive Awareness and Speaking Accuracy in Learners of English as a Foreign Language

This study examines the impact of metacognitive oral corrective feedback instruction on second-language adult learners’ metacognitive awareness of oral corrective feedback, and their spoken grammatical accuracy of definite and indefinite articles. In this exploratory experimental study, 33 Korean adult learners of English were randomly distributed into one of the following two groups: 1) receiving metacognitive instruction, or 2) not receiving metacognitive instruction. Both groups were given the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory for Oral Corrective Feedback pre- and post-instruction to examine the effectiveness of the intervention on increasing learners’ metacognitive awareness of oral corrective feedback. Learners were also given a pre- and post-test to evaluate changes in their spoken grammatical accuracy of the target grammar. Paired-sample t -test results showed that both groups increased their metacognitive awareness of oral corrective feedback as well as their spoken grammatical accuracy when using definite and indefinite articles. Analysis of variance test results showed no significant difference in the increase in metacognitive awareness and spoken grammatical accuracy between groups. The results suggest that oral corrective feedback alone may have enhanced the participants’ metacognitive awareness of oral corrective feedback. However, since both groups had heightened metacognitive awareness of oral corrective feedback, the results are inconclusive as to whether higher metacognitive awareness of oral corrective feedback significantly impacts learners’ spoken grammatical accuracy.