Abstract
Given the scarce literature focusing on students’ perceptions and preferences on oral error correction especially at secondary school level, this study intended to provide some insight on this important issue on English language teaching by exploring the perceptions and preferences of 149 secondary school students in Chile regarding oral error correction. An adapted version of a survey developed by Katayama (2007) was used to explore their general attitudes towards error correction and their preferences for correction of different types of errors as well as particular correction methods. Frequency distribution was calculated to analyse their Likert-scale answers. The results showed that the majority of the respondents regarded error correction as something crucial to improve their proficiency in English. They also favoured those correction techniques in which they were clearly informed about their errors or those in which they participated to correct them.
Highlights
According to Ur (1996) applied linguistics usually distinguishes between errors and mistakes pointing out that errors are “consistent and based on a mis-learned generalization” whereas mistakes corresponds to “occasional and inconsistent slips” (p. 85).Many researchers have seen mistakes as a natural part of the learning process (Brown, 1987; Ur, 1996)
1) Whether or not errors should be corrected The students were asked if they agreed with the statement, “I
The results obtained showed the students’ general attitudes towards error correction and their preferences for some error correction techniques presents in this study. These findings conform to the results of other cites studies on student’s preferences and attitudes towards oral error correction and confirmed my hypotheses regarding Chilean language learners
Summary
According to Ur (1996) applied linguistics usually distinguishes between errors and mistakes pointing out that errors are “consistent and based on a mis-learned generalization” whereas mistakes corresponds to “occasional and inconsistent slips” (p. 85).Many researchers have seen mistakes as a natural part of the learning process (Brown, 1987; Ur, 1996). Ur has claimed that mistakes are just a “symptom of the learner’s progress through and ‘interlanguage’ towards a closer and closer approximation to the target language “(p.85) In this respect, Kroll (1990) has argued that” errors to be pointed out may be those representing an individual’s frequent error patterns, errors that most seriously affect communication, or stigmatizing errors” The student is just informed on how well or badly he/she performed in a task (e.g. grade on an exam) whereas in correction, the student is provided with specific information on his performance or some better alternatives
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