Teacher practices and student preferences for error correction in intensive English instruction

النوع : Mémoire

Research on error correction has focused mainly on whether or not teachers shoul d correct errors in student writing, how they should go about correction, and th e degree of explicitness error feedback should be in order to help students self edit their texts. Much less has been done to ascertain second language writing teachers' perspectives and practices as well as students' beliefs and attitudes regarding error feedback. The present study seeks to explore existing error corr ection practices in three universities of one of Lebanon's districts, namely, Be kaa district from both the teacher and students' perspectives. This study presen ts the results of a survey of 73 ESL students in the Intensive English program i n three universities in Lebanon and of 18 English teachers of these same univers ities. Data were gathered from four major sources: (1) a teacher questionnaire, (2) follow-up interviews for teachers, (3) a teacher error correction task, and (4) a student questionnaire. The results of the present study revealed three maj or points. First, the teachers satisfied students' needs of having their errors corrected. Second, both teachers and students preferred comprehensive error feed back strategies. Third, teachers satisfied students' needs by using error codes in the corrections of students' papers. The results of the present study also em phasized the results of Leki (1991) and Lee (2004) regarding these three points and showed that students were reliant on their teachers in error correction. Pos sible implications pertaining to ways to improve current error correction practi ces were discussed.