Classroom feedback through learners’ eyes: non-English major students’ growth-oriented learning behavior in EFL higher education

Although corrective feedback has been widely studied in EFL contexts, limited research has examined how specific types of classroom feedback relate to non-English major students’ growth-oriented learning behavior (GOLB), particularly in higher education. Previous research has tended to emphasize linguistic accuracy, with less attention to the affective, motivational, and behavioral processes through which learners receive and use feedback. To address this gap, this quantitatively driven convergent mixed-methods study investigated non-English major EFL students’ perceptions of different types of feedback and their perceived contributions to GOLB. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 598 non-English major university students in Thailand. The quantitative phase examined 10 feedback types across four dimensions of GOLB: motivation to improve, learning from mistakes, willingness to apply feedback, and persistence and effort. The qualitative phase analyzed responses to open-ended questionnaire items to contextualize the statistical results. Based entirely on participants’ self-reported perceptions, the findings revealed a clear preference for positive reinforcement, delayed feedback, and explicit correction. Participants rated these three types as receiving higher mean ratings for their motivation, confidence, and intended engagement with feedback than repetition, metalinguistic feedback, and self-correction. Positive reinforcement emerged as the most consistently valued feedback type across all four dimensions. Qualitative findings further showed that students preferred feedback that was encouraging, clear, actionable, and accessible, with many favoring feedback delivered in both Thai and English. The findings suggest that effective feedback is not only corrective but also affectively supportive, cognitively accessible, and linguistically responsive to learners’ needs. The study concludes by proposing the 3C2A Feedback Guideline as a provisional, data-informed framework for learner-responsive feedback in non-English major EFL classrooms.