A Survey Of Error Correction Between Students’Expectations And Teachers’Practice In High School English Classroom

A learner error is a failure in competence while a mistake is a failure in performance. During the process of foreign language learning, it is unavoidable for learners to commit errors. According to Corder (1967),"a learner’s errors are significant in that they provide to the researcher the evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in the discovery of the language". The study of learner errors has been carried out since1950s and it has gone through three stages:contrastive analysis, error analysis and interlanguage. Contrastive Analysis (CA) is a kind of analytical method which is often used to analyze the difficult language points in foreign language teaching and focuses its attention on language itself. However, the research point of Error Analysis (EA) is language learners. E A researchers try to find out how the learners make such hypothesis and check it by analyzing learner errors. In terms of practical teaching, interlanguage theory includes:why to correct, what to correct, when to correct and how to correct.Error correction is the way how teachers respond to learners errors. It is now generally believed that error correction is an important issue to be addressed in language classroom. When correcting errors, teachers should make the feedback effective while protect students’self-esteem. There is no need to correct every error in classroom. Those that prevent comprehension should be corrected instantly.The present study intends to examine whether teachers’practice on error correction is in agreement with students’expectations. Three questions are raised for this check:1) when to correct errors;2) who to correct errors;3) how to correct errors. Considering the present study and the preview classification, errors in this thesis are classified into four kinds:phonological errors, lexical errors, grammatical errors and pragmatic errors. All the four kinds of errors are discussed for each question. The data of teachers’actual practice is collected from classroom observation while the data of students’expectations is gathered through questionnaires.This thesis is composed of five parts. Part one shows the research background, research significance and the organization of this thesis. Part two provides literature review and relevant theories concerned with error correction. Related studies both at home and abroad are also presented in this part. Part three relates to the survey conducted in this study. Subjects in this study are all from Bazhou No.2middle school in Xinjiang.120senior two students fill in the questionnaire and the author observes18lessons given by6teachers (two male and four female). Part four presents the results of the study and the discussion of the preceding three questions. As the research results show that teachers’practice is generally in agreement with students’expectations on when to correct and who to correct errors. Both of them prefer delayed correction and teacher correction. But there is disparity on how to correct these errors. Students are in favor of explicit correction while most errors in classroom are often corrected indirectly. The last part is concerned with the major findings, pedagogic implications. Some limitations and recommendations for further research in this field are also described in this part.