Feedback Strategies and Speaking Skills

Abstract

This quantitative descriptive study examined learners’ perspectives on the use of feedback strategies to enhance speaking skills in EFL classrooms at the Language Center of the Universidad Técnica de Ambato. The study involved 84 participants (35 males and 49 females) who completed a 22-item structured Likert-scale survey. The instrument demonstrated high validity and reliability, obtaining an Aiken’s V coefficient of 0.99 through expert judgment and a Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of 0.936. The findings revealed that recasting, metalinguistic feedback, and explicit error correction were the most frequently perceived feedback strategies used by instructors. Regarding speaking subskills, learners reported stronger development in turn-taking, discourse markers, and grammatical accuracy, whereas fluency obtained the lowest mean score. In addition, description and narrative tasks were identified as the most commonly implemented speaking activities in the classroom. The results indicate that current feedback strategies primarily support structured and controlled oral production, reinforcing grammatical precision and conversational organization, especially among beginner-level learners. However, the predominance of guided speaking activities appears to limit the development of spontaneous communication and oral fluency. The study concludes that although feedback strategies positively contribute to the improvement of speaking skills, their effectiveness is greater in accuracy-oriented aspects than in fluent oral interaction. Therefore, EFL instructors should integrate a more balanced use of implicit and explicit feedback strategies alongside open-ended communicative tasks that promote authentic language use and greater fluency development.