A Study On Pre-service English Teachers' Cognition On Corrective Feedback In EFL Classroom Context

English Learners inevitably make various language errors in the process of learning English.EFL teachers often encounter the following questions in the face of errors made by learners,including whether it is necessary to correct errors,what types of errors to correct,when to correct errors,what strategies should be employed,and who should correct the errors and so on.Pre-service English teachers,as the new force of the teacher groups,is the backbone of future English teaching.It is of great significance to study their cognition on the issues mentioned above.However,the previous researches on pre-service English teachers' cognition on corrective feedback is scarce.Therefore,this thesis aims to explore the pre-service English teachers'cognition on corrective feedback in the EFL classroom context in China.In order to deepen their understanding of corrective feedback and to provide suggestions for the teacher training programme and for pre-service English teachers to improve their English teaching.The study is guided by the following two research questions:(1)What is the pre-service English teachers'cognition on corrective feedback in the EFL classroom?(2)What are the factors that influence the pre-service English teachers'cognition on corrective feedback in EFL classrooms?The sixty-five second year postgraduates of Master of Education(M.Ed)in Central China Normal University which are also the pre-service English teachers are chosen as the subjects of the research.The research was carried out both in quantitative and qualitative ways.The former part was conducted through questionnaires and the latter part through interviews.The questionnaires were used to investigate and find out the cognition of the pre-service English teachers.The interviews were conducted to make further investigations on the result of the questionnaires.The questionnaires were released to the sixty-five subjects and fifty-five of them were returned.And the interviews were made to six of the subjects.After discussing and analyzing the results of both of the questionnaires and interviews,the cognition of the pre-service English teachers on the provision of corrective feedback was found out,and the most effective ways of providing corrective feedback were explored.Here are the major findings of the research.On the one hand,the pre-service English teachers'cognition on corrective feedback are as follows.The pre-service English teachers believe that it is both indispensable and important for teachers to provide corrective feedback for students in EFL class since it not only benefit teachers' professional development,but also do good to students' English learning.They think the types of errors that are made most frequently are grammatical and phonological errors.In the meantime,the types of errors that need to be corrected are the phonological and pragmatic ones.The pre-service English teachers believe that it is the best time to provide corrective feedback immediately after students finish speaking or answering questions in EFL class.They think that the most effective strategies should be elicitation,repetition and recast in EFL class.When correcting different types of errors,they will employ different types of strategies accordingly.Although they value the role of teachers in providing corrective feedback,they think it is most effective for students themselves to correct errors since they can learn from each other and learn English more autonomously.However,if the errors are made by most of students or they are very serious,it is the teachers who should provide corrective feedback.Their experience of being students and of being student teachers in practice schools,and the theories they have learned in postgraduate courses all help shape their cognition on corrective feedback.On the other hand,the factors that influence the pre-service English teachers'provision of corrective feedback in EFL classroom are mainly student factors.And the student factors in the present study consist of students' English proficiency and students' personalities.