You must be crazy!” Teacher Corrective Feedback and Student Uptake in Two Tanzanian Secondary Schools

This study aimed at investigating teachers’ behaviours that co-occur with the oral corrective feedback strategies and their influence on the students’ responses to oral corrective feedback (OCF) in teaching English in Tanzanian secondary schools. In Tanzania English is a foreign language, even though it serves in various government domains such as secondary and post-secondary education, international trade, and the High Court, among others. The study was qualitative, and applied classroom non-participant observation and interviews to collect data which were analysed thematically. It involved 901 students from two secondary schools (at the general certificate level) in Form I to Form IV classes and six English language teachers. Using the the Vygotskyan Sociocultural Model, the findings of the study showed some teachers’ behaviours that frequently accompanied the oral corrective feedback strategies which then influenced students’ uptake in the classrooms. These behaviours include nonverbal actions; oral corrective feedback implementing styles, translanguaging, and the use of negative comments. These behaviours influenced students’ uptake by leading to no uptakes, hesitations in response to feedback, repetition of the same errors, random peer-responses which subsequently discouraged self-repair of errors. Findings contribute to knowledge on OCF and the students’ uptake in to ELT classrooms especially on students’ error treatment atmosphere.