Abstract
Questions surrounding the issue of error in language development have long been controversial. To this day there has been no generally accepted definition of exactly what an error is, or how precisely it is related to ‘correct’ or ‘native’ language. Theories of the role of error in language development range from a bad habit which must be rigidly corrected to avoid fossilisation on the one hand, to a sign of progress in the development of the learner’s interlanguage on the other. As for the role of error correction in practice, this has varied from being seen positively as an essential part of the teacher’s role to being viewed negatively as a useless and even harmful waste of time. If theorists and practitioners cannot agree about basic issues surrounding the concept of error in language development, what about the learner? The fact is that, theoretical and practical controversies notwithstanding, corrective feedback is conducted in language classrooms across the globe day after day. What do individual students, that is those on the receiving end, think about error correction? What kind of error correction do they find useful, who do they think should carry out this correction, when and how? How do their perceptions relate to successful language learning outcomes? In order to explore these questions, the study reported in this chapter was undertaken using a questionnaire to gather data regarding students’ error correction preferences which were then correlated with end-of-course scores to investigate whether any of the individual preferences were related to success in language learning. In addition, qualitative comments were gathered from the questionnaire forms and selected students were interviewed in order to explore individual perceptions. The chapter concludes by suggesting pedagogical implications of the findings and making suggestions for further research.
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Appendix
Appendix
A questionnaire on correction preferences
Please fill in the following form to indicate the ways you prefer your errors to be corrected. Please use the following scale: 5 = strongly positive, 4 = positive, 3 = neither positive nor negative, 2 = negative, and 1 = strongly negative.
I like my errors to be corrected | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Immediately | ||||||
Directly | ||||||
Publicly | ||||||
Always | ||||||
By my teacher | ||||||
By myself | ||||||
By my peers |
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Chunhong, Z., Griffiths, C. (2012). Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives on Individual Differences in Error Correction Preferences. In: Pawlak, M. (eds) New Perspectives on Individual Differences in Language Learning and Teaching. Second Language Learning and Teaching. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20850-8_19
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