The Impact Of College English Teachers’ PCK On Classroom Error Correction

Pedagogical Content Knowledge(PCK) is the core of teachers’ knowledge structure. It is a specific integration of subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, teaching situation and students’ knowledge in the domain of teachers’ knowledge. Therefore, PCK represents a teacher’s comprehensive quality. Each teacher’s PCK is totally different, especially that of the experienced teacher and the novice teacher. The difference in different individual’s PCK is one of the most important factors that distinguish the experienced teacher from the novice teacher. Actually, the teachers who possess different PCK react differently to students’ errors in class. During the process of English teaching and learning, making errors is inevitable. However, the attitudes towards error correction of the experienced teacher are completely different from the novice teacher’s. Thus this paper combines college English teachers’ PCK with classroom error correction, and tries to study the impact of teachers’ PCK on classroom error correction. By comparing the experienced teacher with the novice teacher from the aspects of the timing of error correction, the frequency of error correction, the category of error correction, the strategy of error correction, the performer of error correction, and combining with the research on students’ attitudes towards classroom error correction, the author intends to find out suitable error correction methods, or the best possible ways to gradually cultivate students’ awareness of self-correction and improve teaching effectiveness.This paper adopts both qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis approaches. First, this study is aimed at testing the difference of teachers’ PCK between experienced teachers and novice teachers through a questionnaire survey, and then inputs the research data to the computer and uses SPSS 16.0 to analyze them, and make sure that there is a significant difference between the experienced teachers’ PCK and the novice teachers’ PCK. In order to further study the specific differentiations on the four dimensions of PCK, the author uses Independent Samples Test to distinguish them one by one. In the meantime, this experiment studies students’ attitudes towards classroom error correction by using the Questionnaire Star software. The author releases the website to students, and students fill in the questionnaire according to their own learning situations. From this questionnaire, the author can get the data analysis of students’ attitudes to classroom error correction. On the basis of quantitative analysis, the author also performs the qualitative analysis of classroom observation and interviews, and regards this method as a supplement. In the end, experimental results are presented as follows: 1. there is a significant difference of teachers’ PCK between experienced teachers and novice teachers, and teachers’ PCK has a direct and important impact on teachers’ classroom error correction. 2. all four components of teachers’ PCK have different impacts on classroom error correction respectively, among which subject matter knowledge is the most active, and can most impact teachers’ error correction behavior in class. 3. PCK of the experienced teacher is superior to the novice teacher’s, and students are more inclined to accept ing the experienced teacher’s error correction mode.