A Case Study Of Error Correction In The College Oral English Classroom On The Basis Of The Effectiveness Of Recasts

Language errors accompany the whole learning process. Its inevitable existence has aroused universal discussion on its essences and solutions to confront it. It is widely accepted that Chinese students are good at written examinations, but frustrated in attending oral tests. The urgent need of reformation of oral English class has inspired the present study.World wide studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of recasts that are applied frequently in designing classroom activities in the second language acquisition. Lacking comprehensive inspection in this field, the domestic researchers are not able to present thorough analysis, particularly on recasts in oral English teaching in China. This study is a quantitative based research arguing the function of error correction on the basis of the effectiveness of recasts. The study aims to discover the variables that might influence the effectiveness of recasts. At last, findings and implications are concluded accordingly so as to shed light on future teaching.By viewing the theories of interaction, noticing and input, three research questions are raised on the basis of effectiveness of recasts. Three aspects are stressed: attitudes towards errors and error correction, preference on corrective feedback, and error correction in utilization. According to the introspection of the target teaching environment, questionnaires and recording are included in the methodology that is primarily quantitative. In the questionnaire survey, one hundred and twenty students participated and they were grouped according to their specialties and grades. Every thirty samples represent a specialty. Besides the four groups of students, there are thirty Chinese English teachers who also participate. An audio language database is built on the basis of interactional teaching in classrooms in China Three Gorges University. The corpus contains 19 English classes (25.3 hours approximately). The data of two research sources are programmed in computer by means of statistical software.The results reflect that the effectiveness of recasts is not obvious in the set case in terms of responses and pushed output. Interpretations for this phenomenon are individual differences, teacher's dominance, classroom arrangement, etc.Therefore it can be concluded that the effectiveness of recasts are easily interfered by unsteady factors: the occurrence of recasts strongly depends on teacher's behavior and class arrangement; individual differences influence the recognition of the implicitness of recasts; recasts fail to stimulate responses and pushed output that can, to some extend, measure the effectiveness.