An investigation into teachers’ attitudes towards and practices of corrective feedback on students’ oral mistakes at hanoi national university of education

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ---***--- ĐINH THỊ HƯƠNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS AND PRACTICES OF CORRE

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-*** -

ĐINH THỊ HƯƠNG

AN INVESTIGATION INTO TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS

AND PRACTICES OF CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS’ ORAL MISTAKES AT HANOI NATIONAL

UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

(NGHIÊN CỨU THÁI ĐỘ VÀ THỰC TIỄN VIỆC SỬA LỖI CỦA GIÁO

VIÊN TRONG KỸ NĂNG NÓI CHO SINH VIÊN TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI

HỌC SƯ PHẠM HÀ NỘI)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Major : English Language Teaching Methodology Code : 60 14 10

Hanoi, 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-*** -

ĐINH THỊ HƯƠNG

AN INVESTIGATION INTO TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS

AND PRACTICES OF CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS’ ORAL MISTAKES AT HANOI NATIONAL

UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

(NGHIÊN CỨU THÁI ĐỘ VÀ THỰC TIỄN VIỆC SỬA LỖI CỦA GIÁO

VIÊN TRONG KỸ NĂNG NÓI CHO SINH VIÊN TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI

HỌC SƯ PHẠM HÀ NỘI)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Major : English Language Teaching Methodology Code : 60 14 10

Supervisor : Dr Đỗ Thị Thanh Hà

Hanoi, 2013

DECLARATION

I hereby certify that the thesis entitled

“AN INVESTIGATION INTO TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS AND PRACTICES OF CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS’ ORAL MISTAKES AT HANOI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION”

is the result of my own research for the Degree of Master of Arts at College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi and that this thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other university or tertiary institution

Signature:

Date:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A number of people have influenced the completion of this M.A thesis and have changed a matter of personal responsibility into something much more like real collaboration- whether directly or indirectly

I would like to register my profound gratitude to Dr Do Thi Thanh Ha, my supervisor, for her enthusiastic instruction throughout the process, her outstandingly valuable comments for every minor detail I fully understand how busy she is with all responsibilities as a lecturer as well as Dean of a faculty, and I since rely appreciate this support

I am obliged to the thirty responding teachers of English, especially the three participants in the later stages of the study for their whole -hearted assistance throughout the whole process, from classroom observations to pers onal interviews My special gratitude is to be expressed to them for their enthusiasm in completing the survey questionnaire after a short time

Along the way, I have been incredibly fortunate to be supported and encouraged by my beloved family and friends

To all these people I offer my great appreciation I only hope that they will like the way

it has turned out!

ABSTRACT

This minor research investigated the relationship between the attitudes and teaching practices of corrective feedback among a number of teachers of English Participants were those who were teaching English as a foreign language in Hanoi National University of Education with certain years of teaching experience The method to be employed was a survey questionnaire which involved 30 lecturers This was followed

by the researcher’s classroom observation of 12 lessons by three teachers chosen from the participants from the survey They were teaching speaking skill for English majors

in the same faculty at the university T1 was in charge of a class with 37 sophomores, T1 with 28 juniors and T3 with 32 seniors Finally, one-to-one informal interviews were administered in a semi-structured format with these three teachers Accordingly, the data were collected both quantitatively and qualitatively through a procedure of note-taking, then combining with the results from informal interviews The process of data collection was carried out during the first four weeks of the first semester, academic year 2012-2013 The findings revealed both differences and similarities between participants’ attitudes towards error treatment and their practical application in their speaking classroom settings

TABLE OF CONTENT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENT iv

LIST OF TABLES vi

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 1

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Methods of the study 2

5 Overview of the study 2

PART II: DEVELOPMENT 3

CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 3

1 Definition of terms: Corrective feedback 3

2 Types of corrective feedback 4

3 The importance of corrective feedback 11

4 Who should do the correcting? 13

5 Which types of corrective feedback are the most effective? 13

6 What is the best timing for corrective feedback? 14

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 15

1 Participants 15

2 Data collection instruments and procedure 16

2.1 Teacher questionnaire 16

2.2 Classroom observation 17

2.3 One-to-one interview 17

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 18

1 Quantitative analysis and discussion 18

1.1 Collected database from survey questionnaire 18

1.2 Collected database from classroom observation 23

1.3 Summary of quantitative data 26

2 Qualitative analysis and discussion 27

2.1 Collected database from interviews 27

2.2 Summary 38

PART III: CONCLUSION 39

1 Conclusions 39

2 Pedagogical implications 42

3 Limitations and suggestion for further research 43

REFERENCES 45

APPENDICES vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Schedule of the classes

Table 2 Questionnaire themes

Table 3 Distribution of source of feedback Table 4 Distribution of time of feedback Table 5 Distribution of form of feedback Table 6 Distribution of feedback strategy

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

It is widely approved that errors are unavoidable in language learning, especially in speaking The issue of how teachers respond to students’ language errors, i.e corrective feedback, has been investigated over the last decades Having been widely known under a number of terms, such as “negative evidence”, “repair” and “negative feedback” (Lyster and Ranta, 1997), corrective feedback is commonly referred to by second language teachers As a result of their in-depth studies, corrective feedback has been defined and classified into different types Also, there have been investigations into the relationship between teacher’s corrective feedback and learner uptake on an international scale However, few research findings show how language teachers themselves know and feel about corrective feedback, as well as how far it is involved

in their practical teaching This has inspired the author to come up with the idea of exploring that relationship so that further improvement can be made to promote learners’ language competence

2 Aims of the study

This study examines teachers’ attitudes towards the correction of spoken errors through one-to-one interviews and a belief questionnaire It also investigates the relationship between those standpoints and their teaching practice in classroom context and accordingly suggests more effective ways to deal with students’ spoken errors For convenience, the two terms “error” and “mistake” are used interchangeably in this study

To fulfill these purposes, this research intends to answer the following questions:

1 What are teachers’ attitudes towards oral corrective feedback?

2 How do these attitudes affect and relate to their teaching practice within their classroom settings?

3 Scope of the study

This study focuses on how corrective feedback of spoken errors is perceived and applied by teachers at Hanoi National University of Education Within this scope, the research aims to explore the connection between teachers’ perception and practice, and thereby propose efficient approaches to the treatment of students’ oral mistakes

4 Methods of the study

The researcher administered a survey questionnaire on teachers to collect quantitative data on their perspectives of corrective feedback Further data were then accumulated both quantitatively and qualitatively through an observing process of twelve lessons by three out of the thirty participants in the survey Finally, qualitative data were drawn out from three semi-structured personal interviews for more specific information about the use of corrective feedback inside their classrooms

5 Overview of the study

This study consists of three major parts: Introduction, Development, and Conclusion; references, and appendices

Part I: Introduction – This part presents the rationale, the aims, scope, methods, and

the organization of the study

Part II: Development – This part is divided into the following three chapters:

Chapter 1: Theoretical background – presents the theoretical framework of corrective

feedback, including its definition, classification, importance, participants, and timings

Chapter 2: Methodology – gives details on the participants, data collection

instruments, and procedure

Chapter 3: Findings and discussion – analyzes and discusses the results

Part III: Conclusion – This part summarizes the research and presents pedagogical

implications Limitations as well as suggestions for further study are also included.Finally, references and appendices are provided

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1 Definition of terms: Corrective feedback

1.1 Positive and negative evidence

With regard to input, the two terms “positive evidence” and “negative evidence” have been employed very often in a large number of research papers investigating error correction (e.g Kim, 2004; Gladday, 2012; Gass, 2005) Gass (2005) defined positive evidence as “the set of well-formed sentences to which learners are exposed” It provides learners with what is grammatical and acceptable in the target language Negative evidence, on the other hand, is the provision of information, either directly or indirectly, which is targeted at the incorrectness of an utterance made by learners Gladday (2012: 31) emphasized the function of positive evidence in facilitating learner’s comprehension as it is typical of an “authentic native speaker discourse in a simplified and elaborate format” Negative evidence conversely deals with the erroneous production by second language learners by providing information as to what

is unacceptable in a certain language

With reference to teacher’s response to student’s errors, there are a number of terms,

the most common of which are corrective feedback, negative evidence, and negative

feedback Ellis (2009: 3) affirmed that negative feedback signals in some way that the

learner’s utterance lacks correctness and therefore this reaction is corrective in nature

As a response to a learner’s erroneous utterance, corrective feedback is one type of negative feedback and is called an “other-initiated repair” According to Kim (2004), however, these three terms are used interchangeably in SLA (second language acquisition) literature with subtle differences While negative evidence contains usable information from the learner’s perspective, both negative feedback and corrective feedback include information from feedback providers Therefore, it is the learners who decide whether or not corrective feedback and negative feedback can be used as

negative evidence For the sake of convenience and consistency, this paper mainly uses the term corrective feedback

as explicit as “No, you should say went, not go” or an implicit feedback by a mere

repetition of the error “Go?” Regarding corrective feedback as comprised of both negative and positive evidence, Lyster & Ranta (1997) described corrective feedback

as “the provision of negative evidence or positive evidence upon erroneous utterances, which encourages learners’ repair involving accuracy and precision, and not merely comprehensibility”

2 Types of corrective feedback

Although each researcher finds their own way to classify, on the basis of whether the correct form is directly or indirectly provided, there are explicit and implicit types of feedback The former, on the one hand, is offered with a clear interference in the utterance overtly emphasizing the erroneous part It refers to an explicit provision of the correct form from the teacher, with a clear indication that an error exists This signal is then followed by the provision of the target-like reformulation (Rezaei et al., 2011:23) The later, on the other hand, does not interrupt the flow of the conver sation but include such strategies as recasts, repetition, clarification requests, or even body language, all of which are meant to indirectly correct learner’s errors ((Médez et al., 2010:263) Explicit feedback focuses on form whereas implicit feedback f ocuses on

meaning (Fawbush, 2010) Similarly, Park (2010) claimed that implicit feedback does not affect the flow of conversation while explicit feedback overtly interrupts the course with an emphasis on the ill-formed utterances For these distinctive characteristics, Bower and Kawaguchi (2011) affirmed the positive effect of implicit feedback in encouraging learners to modify their input without a direct indication that a mistake has been made Meanwhile, explicit feedback is constructive in Kim (2004)’s standpoint in that it can prompt learners to notice the gap by attending to the incorrect form they have made

On the basis of the participant in the process of correction, there can be three possibilities of corrective feedback interaction:

(1) Self-correction This is the procedure in which students are aware of the mistakes

they have just made and able to provide the timely correct form According to the five teacher interviewees in Médez et al (2010) research, self-correction was supposed to

be “the set of strategies learners use to get rid of their errors by themselves, not at the moment of making the error, but as a subsequent step outside the classroom, and after having noticed the error” They confirmed that this kind of correction was their learners’ preference because of being “face-saving”, i.e avoiding the loss of self-esteem and confidence Let’s take the following situation as an example In response to the question “What do you often do in your free time?” a student might say “I spend a lot of time to watch…watching television.” In his answer, the student was going to commit an error when he revisited the model structure and was able to provide a correct utterance in a timely manner

(2) Peer correction This may take place when students are working together as pairs

or groups, in which one or two students correct each other’s production in a secure peer atmosphere Therefore, peer correction can effectively help protect learners’ self-image and at the same time improve their self-confidence as well as their independence However, instructors should use peers as correction givers cautiously as this technique

is fundamentally determined by such factors as learners’ personalities, age, self-esteem, and their mutual relationship It is then advisable that teachers get to know their students very well prior to the application of correction by peers

Coming back to the example in self-correction, if the student cannot find the problem

by himself and says “I spend a lot of time to watch television”, the other student in the pair, or a peer in his group may react by simply saying “watching” A less intimate alternative of this technique would be a student, as requested by the teacher, coming in front of the class to find and correct a peer’s mistakes after a series of utterances

(3) Teacher correction Finally, instead of students correcting their own mistakes or

their peers’, it is the teacher who corrects them with an explanation clear and detailed enough to make them understand the matter As teacher is supposed to be highly proficient, this is the most trustworthy way to provide the correct form, especially in difficult cases However, the teacher should pay particular attention to the “affective dimension” and the “face-threatening nature” of corrective feedback The question as how to make error correction in speaking in the most polite way is worth considering,

as some shy students may feel embarrassed to be corrected publicly (Vasquez and Haley, 2010)

Example 1 represents a case of teacher correction In a role-play where one student is a tourist who wants to go to the National stadium and another is a passer-by

Example 1:

S: Show me the way to the National stadium

T: (interrupting and correcting the student’s utterance) When you ask someone you

don’t know for help, you need to use the magic word “please” or “Could you” to show your politeness

S: Could you show me the way to the National stadium, please?

Considering how teachers respond to student errors, Lyster & Ranta (1997: 46), developed a six-type framework of corrective feedback, which has been considered as

a preliminary theoretical background in certain research papers Those six types of corrective feedback are as follows:

(1) Explicit correction As the name reveals itself, explicit correction is the “explicit

provision of the correct form” with explicit signals to the students that the previously utterance is erroneous Such signals can be used hereby as “oh, you mean…”, or “you should say…” Attached with a correction is an indication of the mistake the student has just made This may be the reason for which it is thought of as effectively eliminating ambiguity but not being able to generate student repair Example 1 illustrates this concept

Example 2:

S: The day tomorrow

T: Yes No, the day before yesterday (explicit correction)

(Panova & Lyster, 2002: 584)

(2) Recasts This type of corrective feedback has been controversially referred to as the

most common in a teacher’s correction A recast takes place when the teacher “re peats

a learner’s incorrect utterance, but replaces the error with the correct form” (Russell, 2009) It involves a reformation of the utterance (either completely or partly) made by the students As a result, the error can be minimized without any change in the meaning, nor with a reminder like “you mean” or “you should say” Example 2 is an illustration for this error treatment technique

Example 3:

L: I went there two times

T: You’ve been You’ve been there twice as a group? (recasts)

(Ellis, 2009: 9)

(3) Clarification request Lyster & Ranta (1997) and Rezaei et al (2011) referred to

this technique as a feedback from the teacher trying to signal that student’s utterance is

misunderstood by the teacher, or it is ill-formed in some way and that a reformulation

or a repetition is needed A demonstration is in Example 3

Example 4:

L: What do you spend with your wife?

T: What? (clarification request)

(Ellis, 2009: 9)

Some other examples of teacher’s responses would be “sorry”, “what did you say?” or

“what do you mean?”

(4) Metalinguistic feedback Similar to recast and clarification request, no explicit

correct forms are provided in this corrective practice Instead, there are comments, information or questions related to the well-formedness of students’ utterance However, Rezaei et al (2011: 23) argued that metalinguistic feedback “falls at the explicit end of the corrective feedback spectrum” as it directs the focus of the conversation towards linguistic features of the target language Example 4 sho ws how

it works

Example 5:

S: There are influence person who

T: Influential is an adjective (metalinguistic feedback)

S: Influential person (unintelligible) because of his power

(Sheen, 2004: 278)

By reminding students of the adjective form of the noun “influence” did make the student aware of their own error and correct the sentence themselves

(5) Elicitation This correction technique “prompts the learner to self-correct” (Panova

& Lyster, 2002: 584) Elicitation can be carried out in one of the follo wing ways during

a face-to-face interaction with each being various in their degree of implicitness and explicitness: (a) Eliciting correct forms by asking open questions, (b) pausing to allow

learners to complete the teacher’s sentence, or (c) asking learners to reformulate utterances Example 5, 6, and 7 clarify each respective subcategory

Example 6:

T: In a fast food restaurant, how much do you tip?

S: No money (lexical error)

T: What’s the word? (elicitation)

SmS: Five four (needs repair)

T: What’s the word in a fast food restaurant? (elicitation)

DifS: Nothing (repair)

T: Nothing, yeah Okay, what tip should you leave for the following (topic

continuation)

(Panova & Lyster, 2002: 584)

Example 7:

S: New Ecosse (L1)

T: New Ecosse I like that I’m sure they’d love that Nova ? (elicitation)

SmS: Nova Scotia (repair)

(Panova & Lyster, 2002: 584)

Example 8:

S: I’ll go out if it will not rain

T: Can you correct that? (elicitation)

(6) Repetition This type of corrective feedback requires a change in the teacher’s

tone, together with a repetition of the student’s errors so that their attention can be drawn, which facilitates a self-correction process Example 6 exemplifies how the correction takes place

Example 9:

S: Oh my God, it is too expensive, I pay only 10 dollars

T: I pay? (repetition)

S2: okay let’s go

(Sheen, 2004: 279)

Apart from this six-category division, Lyster and Ranta (1997) added translation as a subtype of recasts Although both implicit indicators that an error has been made, translation is different from recasts in the way that the former is “generated in response

to a learner’s ill-formed utterance in the target language” whereas the latter is

“generated in response to a learner’s ill-formed utterance in a language rather than the target language.”

A little different list of oral error treatment techniques proposed by Ellis (2009)

replaces metalinguistic feedback with paralinguistic signal or paralinguistic sign

(Gladday, 2012: 35), body language (Mendez et al., 2010) in which the corrector, i.e the teacher, uses a gesture or facial expression to indicate that there is something wrong with the speaker’s utterance An example of this can go like this:

of the same coin According to him, “corrective feedback needs to be explicit enough for learners to notice it as correction without any ambiguities” but it may “interrupt learners’ form-meaning mapping” In terms of implicit corrective feedback, recasts can provide the targetlike form immediately after an error but give learners no chance to

reformulate their ill-formed utterances The other subtypes (clarification requests, elicitations) are the opposite Kim also listed some factors that can affect the effectiveness of implicit corrective feedback, such as learners’ level of proficiency, readiness for certain linguistic features or the context where feedback is provided Strongly supporting the use of implicit types of corrective feedback, Rassaei et al (2012) asserted that these types do not provide any explicit warning of learners’ errors and thus do not disrupt the flow of communication Nonetheless, an explicit warning raised by explicit corrective feedback may overtly demand learners to attend to their incorrect output and then break the flow of communication

Although implicit corrective feedback may entail such positive effects, there are a number of researchers who are against the use of implicit corrective feedback Lyster

& Ranta (1997), based on their observation of the feedback behavior of four teachers and the subsequent learner uptake in French immersion classrooms, pointed out the problem of ambiguity caused by implicit corrective feedback in the form of recasts They reported that recasts were most frequently provided (55%) by the teachers but elicited the least learner uptake (31%) and only led to 18% of repair Likewise, Panova and Lyster (2002) found very similar results in their observational study on student and teacher interactions in adult ESL classrooms

3 The importance of corrective feedback

With regard to the role of corrective feedback, there have existed controversial standpoints claimed by SLA researchers and language educators Traditionally, SLA researchers insisted on the limited function of corrective feedback Among those is Krashen, who referred to error correction as “a serious mistake” and supported the claim with two reasons Firstly, error correction immediately affects students by leading them to being on the defensive and trying to avoid mistakes by employing only simple structures The second reason is that error correction only facilitates the

development of “learned knowledge” and does not function in “acquired knowledge” (Krashen, 1982)

Standing on the opposite side are advocates of corrective feedback who argue that corrective feedback, are facilitative and even fundamental to SLA Park (2010) pointed out from his survey result with 160 adult ESL students and 18 native speaking teachers that the majority of both the students (94%) and teachers (88%) agreed that students’ spoken errors need to be corrected Ellis (2009) confirmed “corrective feedback – whether oral or written – is an integral part of teaching”, which is frequently used in classrooms and appears in all popular handbooks for teachers Based on their result from personal interviews with five language instructors at the Universida de Qunintana Roo, Médez et al (2010) reported that as long as certain factors such as students’ attitudes, personalities or emotions are taken into account, all the participating teachers agreed that corrective feedback should be used at the beginning of the learning process because beginners are more willing to correction and therefore fossilization can be more likely to be prevented Similar data were found in Schulz (2001) when 95% of student interviewees in his study supported the teacher’s correction of their errors in class Likewise, Campillo (2004) claimed “feedback may serve the function of making learners notice the mismatch between the input they are exposed to and their output” either implicitly or explicitly It also helps “increase the proficiency of a learner in a target language” (Gladday, 2012) Apart from the discussion on how important corrective feedback is, those recent studies have adjusted their focus on a wider perspective and therefore investigated a number of factors related to corrective feedback: who should do the correcting, which type of corrective feedback is the most effective, and which timing is the best These factors will be addressed in light of the viewpoints from the participants

4 Who should do the correcting?

It is advisable that teachers give students the opportunity to self-correct, as this can help them get rid of their own trouble, which is supposed to facilitate the acquisition of the target language In case that fails, teachers can invite other students to perform the correction, i.e peer-correction Apart from student’s automatic correction of their own mistakes, some corrective feedback strategies may include teachers’ initial help (e.g clarification request, repetition) However, Ellis (2009) acknowledged a number of problems in self-correction of learner’s errors First, learners typically prefer teacher correction to the correction of their own problematic utterances This may result from the fact that, as in Park (2010)’s claim, teachers are experts and therefore the most popular source of feedback in classrooms Second and more urgently, learners can only self-correct provided that they have acquired the necessary knowledge of the language matter

5 Which types of corrective feedback are the most effective?

A question to be discussed is “which strategies are the most effective?” Park (2010:23) confirmed that there are a great number of studies considering how effective different strategies of corrective feedback are to second language acquisition Traditionally, they have not been viewed as equally helpful A closer look at the studies reveals that techniques that require reformulation, i.e the provision of the new corrected form, such

as clarification requests, and comprehension checks, have been more efficient than those which do not, for instance, recasts (Tatawy, 2012:13) This appears contrasting with the findings in studies by Ajideh and FareedAghdam (2012), Panova and Lyster (2002), Sheen (2004) and Suzuki (2004) where they reported that recasts were the most frequent feedback type

Despite those contradictory points of view, it has been generally agreed among researchers of second language acquisition that recasts are the most common form of

oral error correction used by teachers in second and foreign language classroom Furthermore, Park (2010) affirmed in her study that it is approved that there is no one method that can be effective for all language learners Therefore, in order to promote language development, the teacher needs to provide various types of corrective feedback

6 What is the best timing for corrective feedback?

There is an issue of whether oral corrective feedback should be held immediately or with delay While the former requires an instant response to learner’s mistake, the latter may take place after a series of erroneous utterances have been made Most teacher participants (88%) in Park (2010) agreed that spoken errors should be corrected after students have finished speaking as the most appropriate time This result may be due to the teachers’ concern that their immediate correction might disrupt or even discourage students from finishing their speaking or participating in classroom activities Another possible reason could be their beliefs that students can benefit more from delayed feedback as it allows them to finish the message they are trying to convey Yet, it is still impossible to decide if one type would overweigh the other There is no evidence

to prove that immediate correction is any more effective than delayed one

In response to the dilemma all error correction aspects, it can be assured that students’ oral errors should not be left untouched or else their ill-formed utterances will be fossilized Therefore, corrective feedback can be used as an effective way to eliminate possible erroneous utterances among learners In order for corrective feedback to facilitate L2 development, Tatawy (2002) listed six different conditions to be met In general, the corrective techniques used should provide time as well as opportunity for students do self- and peer-repair Furthermore, it should be “fine-tuned” in terms of a close match between “teacher’s intention, the targeted error, and the learner’s perception of the given feedback.”

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOG Y

1 Participants

The researcher first involved 30 teachers of English at a university in Hanoi into a survey via emails They are all Vietnamese and speak Vietnamese as the mother tongue with a certain number of years teaching oral skill in the same faculty They are active female teachers and always willing to adapt to new challenges and changes, therefore willing to participate in the research

For a better focus on the scope being investigated, three out of the 30 teacher participants in the first step were approached in the next stages The reason for the researcher to choose these three teachers were that their schedules were different from one another and from mine as a teacher, hence facilitated the data collection process Another factor was that they differed in teaching experiences and were working with students in various semesters, which contributed to the objectivity of the data Table 1 summarizes some basic information from which the data for this study were drawn

Table 1 Schedule of the classes

proficiency levels varies from intermediate to advanced, which were tested and assessed by the end-of-term tests conducted at the end of the previous semester The tests included all the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and were all designed by a group of assessors from the same faculty The reason for the researcher to exclude freshmen in the faculty was that during the data collection process, first-year students had not begun the school term yet All of these were completely unconscious of being passive participants into a study

2 Data collection instruments and procedure

The present study was carried out ethnographically with three instruments to be applied: (1) questionnaire survey via email, (2) classroom observation, and (3) one -to-one interviews

2.1 Teacher questionnaire

As a major instrument adapted from Anderson (2010) a questionnaire was designed by the researcher and administered via email to 35 teachers in order to investigate their beliefs as well as points of view in some aspects of corrective feedback A clear note informing the deadline of submission and asking for permission for classroom observation during the first three weeks were written in the email Prior to the present study, this questionnaire was applied to one teacher of English in the university as part

of a pilot study to detect and discard any possible misleading questions or misunderstandings so that timely modification could be made The finalized 27 -item questionnaire is based on 6 major themes investigating the participating teachers’ perceptions towards corrective feedback on students’ spoken errors These themes are: (1) Demographic information – questions 1, 2 and 3; (2) participants in feedback process – questions 4, 5 and 6; (3) feedback techniques – questions 7-15 and 24; (4) the timings of corrective feedback – questions 16-20 and 26; (5) the forms of corrective feedback – questions 21-23 and 25; (6) the basis for views on corrective feedback – question 27 30 out of the 35 teachers who were emailed completed the questionnaire

2.2 Classroom observation

For the second stage, the schedule for observation was then registered and approved Before coming to each class, the researcher brought along her voice reco rder, a pen, and a notebook The interaction between three chosen participants and their students in speaking lessons was observed during the first four weeks of the school term Neither the teacher nor the student participants were conscious of the purpose of the observation The amount of time recorded was 12 fifty-minute classes (with 4 classes per teacher) To supplement the transcription, notes were primarily taken, with a focus

on students’ erroneous utterances followed by teacher’s corrective reaction The data were then classified into four different categories prior to being tallied: (1) sources of feedback, (2) timings of feedback, (3) forms of feedback, and (4) feedback strategies

2.3 One-to-one interview

After the classroom observations were all conducted, the three teacher participants were, in turn, asked to join a personal interview as reinforcement to the previously collected data Held a week subsequent the observed classes, each post-observation interview was conducted in a teacher room within the campus and audio -taped The data were then transcribed into a word processor for comparing and contrasting purposes The four main themes were identical to those in the survey questionnaire for easier collation of data, and all the participants’ responses closely reflected the data gained from classroom observations and were compared among one another All the interviews were performed in English and lasted for approximately ten minutes each It should also be noted that although they were semi-structured, the whole interaction between the researcher and the interviewees was strongly based on the four previously constructed major themes However, lively and informative interview sessions were guaranteed The set of six guiding questions for interviewing can be found in Appendix

C

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

1 Quantitative analysis and discussion

1.1 Collected database from survey questionnaire

The coded data from the questionnaire were entered into Microsoft Excel, with the majority of the 27 items encompassing quantitative values The first three items were intended to investigate demographic information of the participants, including their age, experience as teachers of English, and experience in teaching speaking skills All the three questions were in multiple choice designs The next twenty questions applied 5-point Likert scales ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” which were assigned numerical values ranging from one (1) to five (5), respectively However, to simplify the analysis, the author divided 5-point scales into three categories: (1)

“strongly agree” and “agree”; (2) “can’t decide”; and (3) “disagree” and “strongly disagree” The last four items 24-27 were developed under multiple choice designs where participants could choose more than one option at a time Statistics were calculated to find the frequencies and percentages for each of the questionnaire items See Table 2 for a summary of questionnaire themes

Table 2 Questionnaire themes

Percentage of agreed/ strongly agree: %A

Percentage of can't decide: %C

Percentage of disagree/ strongly disagree: %D

9 Clarification requests 53 10 37

12 Elicitation with an incomplete utterance 66 30 4

14 Elicitation with a request for correction 43 30 27

CF timings

20 At the beginning of the next lesson 10 10 80

CF forms

22 Oral and written feedback on the board 73 17 10

Demographic information

Based on the data collected from the fully responded questionnaires, the answers covered all the categories designed by the researcher In terms of their age, more than half of the participants (60%) fell into the middle group of 25-34 while the youngest group of 22-24 accounted for the modest percentage of 17% The proportions in experience as a language teacher of English, however, were allocated quite uniformly among the three groups, with 37% having less than 5 years experience or spending 5-9 years as a teacher of English, and 27% having been teaching for 10 years or more The third question dealt with the participants’ experience in teaching English speaking skills Although they are all university lecturers, some of them (7%) revealed that they had never taught speaking before, while the majority (77%) claimed that they had spent

a certain number of years below 10 working with their students on this language aspect These findings confirmed that most of the respondents in this research were young teachers whose years of experiences in teaching in general and teaching speaking in particular were not very considerable

Participants in corrective feedback

In response to questions 4-6 on who should do the correcting, an outstanding feature was that teachers, classmates, and the error-making students themselves were all supported to take part in the process of correction by almost all the participants, with 80% for self-correction, 86% for peer correction, and a similar percentage of 84% for

teacher correction Around 7% of them could not decide the personal response

Corrective feedback strategies

The next nine questions from 7 to 15 aimed to investigate how participants’ attitudes are towards each feedback technique The most striking figures were found in the categories where the answer of “agree” or “strongly agree” was very much preferable than that of the opposite scale In details, approximately 70% of respondents claimed to approve the use of recast, metalinguistic, repetition, elicitation by giving an incomplete utterance, and body language Conversely, those who disagreed on the application of these techniques accounted for a general proportion of less than 30% For further specification, 73% of the teacher contributors agreed on metalinguistic and a moderately similar 70% on repetition These figures contradicted with a humble percentage of 17% falling into the other end of the scale More considerably, only 4% opposed to teacher’s elicitation with an incomplete utterance in contrast with 66% approved the strategy

Excluding these substantial distinctions, it should also be noticed that some techniques received agreement and disagreement in a generally equal manner The percentages of those who supported the use of explicit correction and disapproved it were 44% and

46%, respectively Likewise, clarification request got held up by 53% while rejected by 37%

Concerning the middle scale of “can’t decide”, all the seven major techniques of corrective feedback collapsed in this category Though at different levels, the most prominent of all fell into the application of elicitation either by giving an incomplete utterance or by directly requesting error makers to provide correction, and body language, with 30% of the participants

To investigate which type of corrective feedback is the most favorable, question 24 requested the participants to reflect their teaching practice by choosing at least one out

of the seven options of feedback strategies The data collected disclosed the fact that recasts and metalinguistic were considered to be the most often used, although they accounted for just one half of the total responses On the contrary, body language and clarification requests made up the least with 20% and 23%, correspondingly In general, these results fit well with those from the previous questions to explore

individual attitudes toward each feedback technique

Corrective feedback timings

The idea of when to correct students’ spoken errors was broken into five points of time, ranging from question 16 to question 20 The participants posed various opinions on correction timing In general terms, a large number of these teachers preferred to do the correction either after a series of errors, after the student has finished speaking (80%)

or at the end of an activity (70%) This finding may confirm the fact that they seemingly intended to avoid interrupting students’ flow of speaking but still keep it

“hot” enough for the correction to be taken in by the class This may also explain for a considerably high proportion (61%) to reject immediate correction towards a mistake even though the error maker was still talking Similar significant statistics were also found in the opposition of delaying corrective feedback until the end of the class with 53% and the beginning of the next lesson with 80% Apart from these strong claims on

their attitudes, some were not yet able to choose whether or not to make use of correction at any time The timing when class ended took up the highest percentage of nearly one third (27%) while the other timings ranged from 10% to 23%

Question 26 summarized the teachers’ practice on the timings of feedback The majority of the responses were ticked at the choice of c orrection either after the student’s speaking turn (83%) or at the end of an activity (73%) as being applied the most frequently Immediate correction and end-of-class correction were employed the most by around a quarter Correction at the beginning of the following lesson was inapplicable in any cases These findings, parallel with those in feedback techniques, corresponded with the results collected from questions 16 -20 and analyzed above

Corrective feedback forms

In response to questions 21-23 on in what form corrective feedback is held, 77% of the teachers and a similar 73% held the viewpoint that spoken errors should be corrected in

a merely oral form, or in a combination of oral and written notes on the board, correspondingly There were still some participants who could not decide on the form

of correction These accounted for small percentages ranging from 7% in oral feedback

to 17% in the other two forms Those statistics showed a clear cut between the two sides of the scale in oral correction, and oral and written correction, whereas nearly uniform were 40% agreement in comparison with 43% disagreement on the use of written notes for individual error makers

In response to question 25 on which form(s) of corrective feedback appeared the most

in their speaking lessons, 63% of the teachers selected to give feedback in oral form as well as written form on the board at the same time while the choice for written notes for individuals humbly took up 17% There was no distinction in the use of oral feedback and the proportions were divided into two halves, although 77%, as cited above, showed a clear favour of this category

Ground of view

The last question was designed as a wrap-up on the basis for all the responses Almost all the teachers (93%) who participated in this research attributed their responses in this survey to their personal experience as a language teacher More than half of them (57%) looked to their years of learning English while just around 40% admitted that their answers were based on knowledge from books and articles, or teacher training courses

1.2 Collected database from classroom observation

Before the data collected from classroom observation are analyzed, it should be noted that the total numbers of student and teacher turns were not counted, nor were the number of errors This is because these figures are very little relevant to the aim of this study, which has been clarified as to investigate teachers’ attitudes towards different aspects of corrective and the relationship between those viewpoints and their practical application inside the classroom

Each of the four tallied categories already mentioned was collated in different tables Table 3 compares the number and percentage of correctors categorized into three

different groups, namely self (student corrects their own mistakes), peer (classmates do the mistake correction), and teacher (teacher is the corrector)

Table 3 Distribution of source of feedback