Impact of Metalinguistic vs. Clarification Request Feedback on the Speaking Anxiety of Iranian Students in IELTS Preparatory Classes

One of the biggest challenges IELTS candidates face in the speaking test session is speaking anxiety. To explore techniques to reduce this anxiety among those learners preparing to sit for the above test, the present study was carried out to compare the effect of metalinguistic and clarification request feedback on the aforesaid anxiety. To this end, 58 male and female learners who had been selected through their performance on a sample language proficiency test, were assigned to one control (N = 18) and two experimental groups (N = 20, each). The control group received different types of corrective feedback, the metalinguistic group received metalinguistic clues on the errors they made, and the clarification request group was asked to clarify their intended meaning whenever they made a mistake. Both types of corrective feedback showed a significant decrease in the speaking anxiety level of the participants in comparison to the control group. However, the metalinguistic group was found to have less anxiety after the treatment. This proves that in IELTS preparatory classes where mistakes on the part of the learners could be corrected as far as their accuracy is concerned, providing learners with metalinguistic clues seems to be more beneficial compared to the clarification request corrective feedback.