| The study of learner error has been carried out since 1950s and it has undergone stages such as Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis and Interlanguage Analysis. Although this issue has caught attention of a lot of researchers', there has been no consensus on whether learner errors should be corrected. Some researchers strongly advocate the correction of errors while some hold a negative view. Meanwhile, the attitude towards error changes with the fluctuation of teaching methodology in a particular period. Nowadays, due to the prevalence of Communicative Language Teaching in China, teachers'tolerance of error is much greater than ever before and so their correction behavior is much less than before. But what are the students'needs? Are they satisfied with the teachers'classroom practice of error correction? The author considers it a worthy problem to be probed into, thus carrying out a survey to inquire the students'and teachers'attitudes and expectations to error and error correction. A research is conducted among teachers and students in GXNU exclusively to find out what teachers and students do with error in class. With questionnaires and classroom observation, the author attempts to find out: (1) teachers'and students'attitudes towards error and error correction; (2) teachers'actual classroom practice of error correction; (3) students'expectations of the way of error correction; and (4) students'emotional feeling after their errors being corrected. This dissertation is composed of five parts. Part I, INTRODUCTION, describes the background and the scope of the study. The present study is based on the theories of the effect of error correction in second language acquisition and foreign language study. Part II, LITERATURE REVIEW, addresses the theoretical background of the survey, including a brief history of error analysis, error correction, the definition of error, and error treatment with the author's brief comment bringing up the rear. Part III relates to the survey conducted in this study. The survey was conducted among 30 teachers and 300 students, and 22 questionnaires for teachers and 246 for students were valid. The questionnaire for teachers was mainly to find out teachers'attitudes towards error, their comments on their classroom practice of error correction, and their actual classroom practice of error correction. The questionnaire for students was to inquire the students'attitudes to error, their expectations of way of error correction, and their emotional feeling when and after errors being corrected. The results indicate that all teachers hold a positive view on error and error correction, and most students think that it necessary for errors to be corrected by teachers. What is worth mentioning here is that most students think that they are willing to accept teacher's correction, and they will not have relative affective problems. Meanwhile, the results also suggest that teachers'classroom practice of error correction does not always correspond with their comment on themselves and the students'expectations. Part IV is IMPLICATIONS AND APPLICATIONS. Both the survey and observation trigger rich insights about College English teaching. Education authority and institute should improve facilities for teaching and research so that College English teachers can get easy access to information concerning the latest development in the ELT field; more opportunities for way of error correction training should be provided for college English teachers, with focus both on teaching and theory and practice; in the process of professional development, teachers should update their knowledge; classroom-based action research is strongly advocated since it helps teachers identify and discover solutions to problems in teaching; meanwhile, teachers should establish a rapport with the learners by learning to conduct researches concerning the needs analysis to guarantee the class participation and interaction; moreover, teachers should learn how to cooperate with each other in teaching in order to improve their teaching efficacy and their professional development; in treating learner errors, teachers should also encourage the way of self-correction among students, which not only can make correction more effective but also raise student's awareness of error; students'affective condition should arouse teachers'more attention; modern media technology such as e-mail should be employed in the course of error correction. Part V is CONCLUSION. The findings suggest that students in GXNU think highly of the effect of teacher's correction in improving their English proficiency, and teachers should do more to satisfy students'expectations of error correction. Since this study was carried out in a very small scale, it is impossible to inquire all the problems. A number of relevant issues still remain for further discussions and investigations.
|
PDF Full Text Request