Error Correction In College English Class For Non-English Majors

It is generally approved that error correction plays a positive role in language development in the field of linguistics.Although learner errors have caught attention of a lot of researchers' from Contrastive Analysis,Error Analysis and Interlanguage Analysis,there has been no consensus on whether learner errors should be corrected.Research on classroom SLA shows that teacher-student interaction provides the best opportunities for learners to exercise target language skills,to get useful feedback,to obtain comprehensible input and to produce much more language output.It is worthwhile to probe into learners' requirements and attitudes towards error correction.Due to this,under the supervision of Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis,Long's interaction hypothesis and Swain's comprehensible output hypothesis,the present research manages to conduct an empirical study as for error correction of college English class for non-majors,expecting to enlighten college English teaching.The subjects of the present research were six college English teachers and their 289 students who came from six classes of grade 2006 at Lanzhou City University.The research was carried out mainly through the questionnaires and personal interview,classroom observation as the subsidiary,hoping to do a relatively complete research on error correction in college English class for non-English majors at the university.The concrete purposes were as the following:teachers and students attitudes towards error and error correction;whether the teachers are cousistent with the students' in the content,timing,strategy and subject of error correction;students' feeling after error correction.After statistics and analysis on the related data,the results were as the following:First,both the teachers and the students had a correct and reasonable attitude towards the error and error correction and they thought errors were an unavoidable element in language learning and error correction was beneficial to language learning.But two aspects were different:on one hand,the teachers themselves thought they put great emphasis on the meaning when dealing with the oral production in class, while the students thought the teachers showed their special attention to language form,which was identical to what the present researcher had observed through classroom observation;on the other hand, the students greatly agreed to the usefulness of error correction,while 68%of the students thought error correction not very helpful or no help.Second,the teachers and the students have much consensus on the content,timing,strategy and subject of error correction,but there have been some differences.As for the content of error correction, both the teachers and the students paid much attention to the basic knowledge of English such as grammar,vocabulary and pronunciation,but a little attention to expression and discourse errors.The teachers themselves thought they frequently correct grammar and phonological errors in class,while the students thought the teachers' couldn't help correcting the pronunciation errors,which was consistent with what the present researcher had observed.With regard to the timing of error correction,the students hoped the teachers corrected the errors in class and the teachers themselves thought they did so.More than one third students hoped the teachers could note down the errors and later provide a centralized lecture and practice,while few teachers liked to do that.Less than one fourth of the students hoped the teachers to note down their errors and to exchange ideas personally after class while still few teachers did that.As to the strategy of error correction,both the teachers and the students regarded elicitation as the most effective strategy,while explicit correction was frequently used in the actual teaching.As far as the subjects of error correction were concerned,the students were more willing to be corrected by the teachers and the teachers often played a leading role in teaching.Peer correction were certainly used as long as the students had the chances,while this widely-accepted and advocated method was rarely employed in the present classroom.Thirdly,the teachers and the students held a rational attitude towards the necessity of error correction.The teachers took the students' different personalities and different English proficiencies into consideration when dealing with error correction,and showed a friendly attitude towards the students' errors.The students thought error correction normal and didn't make them nervous or anxious.Through the survey,we have had a further understanding about the college English teaching.In order to set up harmonious teacher-student,student-student interactional classroom teaching environment,the present research put forward some suggestions as to how college English teachers put stress on error correction in teaching process,how to lay particular attention to the content of error correction,how to choose the timing of error correction,how to regulate the strategy of error correction, how to make the subject of error correction clear and how the teachers investigate and study the students' requirement for error correction.