A Case Study On The Approaches To Error Correction In Senior High School English Class

Errors are very common in foreign language learning and some scholars think error correction a necessary practice for language teaching. Classroom teaching is the main channel for students to learn English, so teachers’ approach and validity on error correction will directly affect students’ learning effect. The current language teaching class shows students’ language error is still a big problem. There is a discrepancy between teachers’error correction and students’ expectation, even between teachers’opinions on error and their practices in the classes. So in the real classroom teaching, what is the current situation of error correction in senior high school and whether the teachers’practice agrees with students’expectation or not are still worthy of our attention and exploration. The study on error correction will offer some help to English teaching.The paper presents a case study with one English teacher and72students from two classes. The data of the study are collected from questionnaire with the students, classroom observation and interview with the teacher.Based on the data analysis, the major findings are as follows:1. There is a gap between teacher and students’opinion on error correction. The teacher prefer recast but the students do not.2. In some aspects, teacher’s practice of error correction in class does not quite agree with his opinion and students’expectation.3. Among the teacher’s favorable feedback, recast has the lowest rate of student uptake. Explicit correction which both the teacher and the students like has the highest rate of uptake with self-correction. Meanwhile, meta-linguistic feedback which the students like but the teacher does not like has a relatively higher rate of uptake.Considering the findings, some pedagogical implications have been concluded:1. The teacher need to combine teaching theories with teaching practice in order to narrow the gap between his thoughts and practice.2. The teacher should balance the application of recast and meta-linguistic feedback in his class. Besides, students’ expectations is very important for language teaching.