As a response to the mismatch between the performance standards indicated in the English curriculum and the communicative competence of English language learners, teachers employ oral feedback strategies that border on the Embarrassment and Hygiene Resource Framework of Mackay (1993). This study aimed to investigate how and why this framework operates in the English language teaching (ELT) of the Philippines by recording actual classroom interactions of five experienced teachers and five beginning teachers with their respective students from 10 public rural high schools. Descriptive statistics and content analysis were used in order to analyze and interpret data gathered from transcribed classroom interactions and semi-structured interview sessions of the participants. It was found out that the student-participants exhibit embarrassment-producing behaviors in the classroom, such as silence in response to teacher's questions, undue delay in response, inarticulate response, and resort to first language. In order to resolve such forms of embarrassments, the teacher-participants deploy hygiene resources, such as reasoning aloud for the students, vicarious dialogue, expansion or minimal responses, question reduction, and resort to first language. Generally, more than half (54% - 70%) of the oral feedbacks generated by the participants are classified under Mackay's (1993) framework. Reasons for this extensive display and use of embarrassments and hygiene resources include the function of local languages as communicative resources, use of speech disfluencies as aids in oral feedback planning, role of wait-time and periods of silence in promoting information processing, and regard for simplifying questions as strategies in soliciting responses. With such positive evaluations associated to cases of embarrassments and use of hygiene resources in ELT, this research argues that these mechanisms should be regarded as tools of empowerment for both teachers and learners. Participants employ them to facilitate negotiation of meaning and distribution of power relations in the multilingual ELT classrooms.