Teacher feedback beliefs and practices in Cambodian EFL classrooms: grammar first or student first?

This study investigates the written feedback practices of Cambodian university teachers of English, drawing on 390 student journals and interviews with 11 instructors at a public university. Teacher feedback was dominated by grammar-focused, direct correction, influenced by student expectations for comprehensive error marking, heavy teaching loads, and limited institutional guidance. At the same time, many teachers described feedback as encouragement and emphasized the emotional support they hoped to provide, revealing a tension between their relational intentions and the predominantly form-focused practices. This pattern reflected not only pedagogical beliefs but also the institutional, cultural, and evaluative conditions that made surface-level correction the most feasible and professionally legible option. While these dynamics echo findings from other exam-driven English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) settings, the Cambodian case illustrates how institutional ambiguity, workload constraints, and hierarchical classroom norms can intensify belief-practice tensions. The study offers context-sensitive empirical insight from a less-researched setting and suggests that improving feedback practice requires both teacher preparation and institutional frameworks that acknowledge workload demands, cultural expectations, and the emotional labor of feedback.