The associations between foreign language anxiety and the effectiveness of immediate and delayed corrective feedback

This article reports on a study exploring the associations between foreign language anxiety and the effectiveness of immediate and delayed corrective feedback (CF) in the acquisition of the English past tense. One hundred and two middle school English as a foreign language (EFL) learners responded to the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale for the purpose of gauging their foreign language anxiety. They were then assigned to three conditions: Immediate CF, Delayed CF, and Task Only. The three groups performed six communicative tasks in three treatment sessions, two in each session, which aimed to elicit the learners' use of the English past tense. The Immediate and Delayed CF groups received CF treatments during task performance in the first and final treatment sessions, respectively, and the Task Only group performed the learning tasks without receiving any CF treatment. The results showed that anxiety was a significant predictor of Delayed CF but not Immediate CF and Task Only. Drawing on attentional control theory, we interpret the results as suggesting that the debilitative impact of anxiety on L2 learning is triggered by a heavier processing burden delayed CF imposes on learners' cognitive resources.