Students’ Attitude To Corrective Feedback In EFL Classroom

In1960s, a number of researchers have been studying errors in SLA. Then theyfocused their minds on corrective feedback in1980s. It is no doubt that teachercorrective feedback plays an essential role for students in learning second language.Corrective feedback can help learners to recognize their errors clearly and made themstudy harder, and it has also been seen as one of approaches to target language input.The objective of this study is to investigate students’ attitude and preference to theteacher corrective feedback in classroom, in order to help teachers give learners moreeffective corrective feedback.To investigate the students’ attitude to teacher corrective feedback, a questionnaire,administered to325students from a primary school, a junior middle school and asenior high school, and interviews to12students were conducted. The results of theinvestigation reveal that almost all of the students hold positive attitude to correctivefeedback. Most of the students thought every error should be corrected. But somestudents believed that too much corrective feedback would make students loseself-confidence. Students had different opinions about what errors to correct and howto correct errors. However, they had the same opinions about when to correct errors.Most of students insisted that errors should be corrected in classroom, and they didnot hope that their teachers correct errors before they finished their speech. Primarystudents thought phonological errors should have the highest correction rate. Juniorschool students thought lexical errors should have the highest correction rate. Seniorhigh school students hold grammatical errors should have the highest correction rate.Primary school students liked explicit correction best. Junior school studentspreferred negotiation of form. Senior high school students liked both negotiation ofform and explicit correction.Pedagogically, some implications can be inferred for the teachers. Teachers shouldconsider many factors, not only the error itself but also students’ language proficiency,characters, affective factors, needs and preferences.