Prefrences Of College Students With Different Learning Motivations And Proficiencies For Teacher's Oral English Corrective Feedback

During the process of language acquisition,it is inevitable for students to make errors,which is a common phenomenon.Nowadays,CET-SET(College English Test-Speaking English Test)was added to the College English Test.More and more universities and colleges are paying attention to the improvement of students' oral English.Error-correction especially teacher's corrective feedback plays a significant role in English class.It is not only one of the tools that teachers use to carry out teaching plans but also an important source for students to obtain comprehensible target language input.In addition,it is the main way to improve the accuracy of students' oral English output.Therefore,how to correct will directly affect teachers' teaching effects as well as students' foreign language achievements.With the implementation of the new curriculum reform,a plenty of new educational ideas were put forward,among which the most important was the student-centered idea.Therefore,based on students' preferences and demands for corrective feedback,teachers use a combination of various corrective feedback strategies so as to improve teaching effects.However,the current literature suggested that previous researches on students' demands and preferences for oral error-correction usually took students as a whole and ignored the individual differences between students.In addition,the majority of the research subjects were junior middle school students.In order to further understand the preferences of students in different groups for teachers' oral error correction,this thesis examined the following aspects:(1)What are students' general attitudes and preferences to TCF?(2)What are the attitudes and preferences of students with different learning motivations to TCF?(3)What are the attitudes and preferences of students with different learning proficiencies to TCF?In this study,by means of quantitative and qualitative methods,300 non-English majors' sophomores from Northwest A&F University were investigated to find out the attitudes and preferences of students with different levels of learning motivation and proficiency to teachers' oral corrective feedback.A questionnaire was used to carry out quantitative research which was divided into two parts.The College Students' Learning Motivation Scale was developed by Amabile,Hill,Hennessey and Tighe,revised by Chi Liping and Xin Ziqiang.The Student's Preferences for Teacher's Corrective Feedback Scale was from Li Jian who made up the scale by adapting the questionnaire of Qiu Zhaojie(1997)and the questionnaire of Hao Baogui(2009).Qualitative research mainly took the method of interview.Twelve students were interviewed after the questionnaire survey.Research results indicated that:(1)In terms of the necessity of error-correction,students of different groups all held a positive attitude.The majority of the students believed that errors needed to be corrected whenever discovered.Besides,there were also some students holding the point of view that too much correction would combat the enthusiasm of learning.(2)With respect to what to correct,students of different groups all hoped that teachers could correct their grammar errors more frequently so as to improve the accuracy of language expression.In addition,successful students believed that expression errors should also be often corrected,while average and less-successful students loved vocabulary errors to be corrected frequently.(3)As to when to correct,most of the students were in favor of delay-correction which means that error correction happens after they finish their speech.High-motivated students also held a positive attitude towards immediate-correction.(4)With regard to how to correct,most of the students liked the negotiation of form which not only gave them a chance to correct errors by themselves under the guidance of teachers but also avoided making students fall into an embarrassing situation.Students with a higher level of motivation hoped that teachers could use explicit correction to correct their grammar and vocabulary errors so as to grasp the accurate forms directly.In addition,the least-preferred way of corrective feedback to students with lower learning proficiency is recast.Based on the results of the study,in order to improve the effect of teacher's corrective feedback,three suggestions are put forward for English teaching:(1)Enhancing theoretical study and improving ideology;(2)Valuing individual difference and teaching accordingly;(3)Reflecting on teaching practice and strengthening exchanges and cooperation.In conclusion,when carrying out corrective feedback in English class,teachers not only need to consider the characteristics of errors and the effect of error-correction,but also to take student's learning proficiency,age,personality and other factors into account,comprehensively choosing the best way of corrective feedback so as to improve student's learning efficiency.