Students’ interaction set the path for their academic careers. An important aspect of this interaction is the provided feedback, this later can be either positive or negative. However, a prevalent distinction is made between negative and positive feedback. For so many researchers, positive feedback is considered the most effective for enhancing students’ learning as negative. Reynolds (2013) defines feedback as any response from a teacher regarding students’ performance or behavior. Its purpose in the learning process is to enhance the learners’ performance. For instance, when a task is expressed correctly and well-performed, positive feedback relays information to behavior should continue, which makes learners encouraged, makes them feel confident, and dare to express themselves without any fear or hesitation.
Moreover, when a teacher praises his learners about what they have been well, it works on constructing their strength, consequently, they would likely repeat it in order to secure continual approval. It raises their self-esteem which pushes students to perform more and more effectively. This feedback is a very useful technique that helps teachers to foster interaction with their learners. It is obvious when some receive positive feedback or praise, it would create a comfortable environment that encourages everybody to express themselves freely, which leads to effective learning. In addition, this late helps learners to boost their self-confidence and makes them believe in their own abilities as Alqahtani (2011) said: “Positive feedback stands for praising learners for doing a good job. This appraisal helps them to develop good self-confidence”.
On the other side, negative feedback, it occurred in two possible ways, either explicitly or implicitly, when the students’ performance is incorrect or needs feedback, according to Nunan (1991), teachers can give criticism, a punishment, or directly the incorrect part. He added that it is strongly believed that this type has a negative impact on the development of students. In EFL instruction, teachers use this kind of feedback to inform their learners about where they have made an error. These errors should be embraced, this later may be done in grammar, phonetics or spelling, etc., where teachers bear in mind developing their accuracy, which is important in acquiring a foreign language.
However, the other category of researchers who are against the above ones claims that positive feedback is more effective and that negative feedback affects negatively the learners’ performance. Hattie and Timperly (2007) argue that positive feedback that comes as praises are less effective because it carries just a little information. In addition, it would be detrimental to learners’ learning, if it is used without a specific purpose, frequently, or when it is not necessary. According to Cannella (1986), when a teacher provides non-specific praise, students will be confused about what behavior is approved and what should they do about it. She added that also that when praises are interpreted as a reward, students become dependent on it. And it may cause students to lose interest in learning when the reward is no longer available.
It is known that making errors is an indispensable part of learning a foreign language. Which means that they are developing the system of their interlanguage. EFL teachers see that correcting the committed mistakes and providing negative feedback is their responsibility in order to help them enhance their skills. Alison (2012) in this vein states that learners receive feedback on their language production, potentially helping to draw attention to linguistic problems and helping them to notice gaps between features of their inter-language and the target language. What this means is that negative feedback helps learners to be aware of the gaps between their interlanguage and the target language, which make it more effective than positive one, because the provided information helps more than the ones provided by positive feedback. However, according to Pasty and Spada (2006), EFL teachers should provide negative feedback when the errors made by learners are persistent, insistently repetitive, and shared by the majority of students in the class. This brought attention to that excessive negative feedback can have a negative effect on EFL learners’ performance.
To conclude, it seems that effective feedback should be a mixture of positive and negative feedback because neither too much praise nor too much criticism will be helpful for learners’ development.