Error correction in oral communicative activities students and teachers viewpoints m a thesis in tesol

In these classes, oral communicative activities are frequently used and teachers tend not to correct all student’s errors and mistakes.. The results also indicate that students and teach

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

HOÀNG THỊ PHƯƠNG THẢO

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR

THE DEGREE OF MASTER IN TESOL

SUPERVISED BY:

NGUYỄN THỊ THANH PHƯỢNG, PH.D

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled:

Error Correction in Oral Communicative Activities-

In terms of the Statement of Requirements for Theses in Master’s Programmes issued by the Higher Degree Committee

Ho Chi Minh City 2009

Hoàng Thị Phương Thảo

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank with all my heart to people who have helped me to complete this research project: Dr Nguyen Thi Thanh Phuong, my dear advisor, who has guided me and encouraged me with great energy and endless faith in my abilities Her useful suggestions, direction and encouragement were really invaluable; all my teachers and staff at Department of English Linguistics and Literature who have given

me useful advice and direction and kept me going in the right direction

I sincerely thank hundreds of teachers and students who gave me priceless responses and the administration and staff of Youth Foreign Language School, Ho Chi Minh City I would not have finished this study without their help

I would like to convey my gratitude to all my friends, my classmates, my colleagues who have supported, encouraged and given me useful comments and advice throughout my studies

Finally and most importantly, I would like to express my special thanks to my family: my husband, my son, my parents, my sisters and brothers, my nieces and nephews Their love support, encouragement, understanding and belief have carried

me throughout the writing of this research I could not have completed my studies without them

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT vii

LIST OF TABLES ix

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xi

1.CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM 1

1.2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY 3

1.3 RESEARCH DESIGN 4

1.3.1 Research Questions 4

1.3.2 Data Collection Procedures 4

1.3.3 Delimitations and Limitations 5

1.3.3.1 Delimitations 5

1.3.3.2 Limitations 5

1.3.4 Assumptions 6

1.4 DEFINITION OF TERMS 6

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 8

1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY 9

2 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 10

2.1 ERRORS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING 10

2.1.1 Types of Errors 11

2.1.1.1 Overt Errors and Covert Errors: 11

2.1.1.2 Global Errors and Local Errors: 11

2.1.2 Sources of Errors 13

2.1.2.1 Interlingual Transfer 13

2.1.2.2 Intralingual Transfer 13

2.1.2.3 Context of Learning 13

2.1.2.4 Communication Strategies 14

2.2 DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS ABOUT ERROR TREATMENT IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING 14

2.2.1 Which Errors should be Corrected? 15

2.2.2 When should Errors be Corrected? 16

2.2.3 Who should Correct the Errors 17

2.2.4 How should Errors be Corrected 17

2.3 ERROR TREATMENT IN ORAL COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES 19

2.3.1 Oral Communicative Activities 19

2.3.2 Error Correction in Oral Communicative Activities 20

2.4 STUDENTS’ PREFERENCES 23

2.5 SUMMARY 24

3 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 25

3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN 25

3.2 POPULATION AND SAMPLE 27

3.3 INSTRUMENTS 28

3.3.1 Description of the Questionnaires 29

3.3.2 Pilot Test 30

3.4 PROCEDURES FOR DATA COLLECTION 31

3.5 PROCEDURES FOR DATA ANALYSIS 32

3.6 SUMMARY 33

4 CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 34

4.1 DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PARTICIPANTS 34

4.1.1 The Students 34

4.1.2 The Teachers 36

4.2 RESEARCH QUESTION 1: STUDENTS’VIEWPOINTS 38

4.3 RESEARCH QUESTION 2: TEACHERS’VIEWPOINTS 45

4.4 RESEARCH QUESTION 3: COMPARISONS OF STUDENTS’ AND TEACHERS’ VIEWPOINTS 55

4.6 SUMMARY 68

5.CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 69

5.1 OVERVIEW OF THE RESEARCH STUDY 69

5.2 SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS 70

5.3 RECOMMENDATIONS 72

5.3.1 Recommendations for Teachers of Communicative Classes 73

5.3.2 Recommendations for Students of Communicative Classes 74

5.3.3 Recommendations for Future Research 75

5.4 CONCLUSIONS 76

REFERENCES 79

APPENDICES 83

APPENDIX A STUDENT QUESTIONNAIRE 83

APPENDIX B TEACHER QUESTIONNAIRE 86

APPENDIX C STUDENT QUESTIONNAIRE (VIETNAMESE VERSION) 89

APPENDIX D TEACHER QUESTIONNAIRE (VIETNAMESE VERSION) 92

APPENDIX E STATISTICS FROM STUDENTS’ RESPONSES 95

APPENDIX F STATISTICS FROM TEACHERS’RESPONSES 97

APPENDIX G INDEPENDENT SAMPLES TEST RESULTS FROM STUDENTS AND TEACHERS’RESPONSES 99

communication In these classes, oral communicative activities are frequently used and teachers tend not to correct all student’s errors and mistakes However, some students complained about their teacher’s practices This study was carried out to examine

whether there was a difference between students’ preferences and expectations and teachers’ beliefs about error correction in oral communicative activities

The descriptive, quantitative methodology was selected and statistical analyses were used to find the answers to the research questions Questionnaires with close-ended questions, multiple- choice questions and statements with Likert-scale were used to collect data from 195 students and 21 teachers of Youth Foreign Language School in Ho Chi Minh City The data then was analyzed using SPSS (Statistic Package for Social Science) software to find the results

The findings showed that students expected their teachers to correct their errors immediately by giving them the correct answer rather than ignoring the errors or just indicating that there was something wrong and letting them to correct themselves They also did not want their teachers to let them speak freely without correction Teachers

believed that correction their students’ errors and mistakes was one of their most

important responsibilities, therefore, they tended to correct every error when they heard

it Some of them tried to correct their students’ errors as soon as they found them and other delay correction until the end of the activities The results also indicate that students and teachers are affected greatly by traditional method of learning and teaching which emphasizes on accuracy rather than fluency, therefore, teachers should find an error correction strategy that can harmonize traditional and “new” methods of learning and teaching so that they can help students perform better in oral communicative activities

LIST OF TABLES

Table 6: S4 Among these types of errors: phonological errors, syntactic errors, lexical errors,

Table 7: S5 I prefer my teacher to correct my errors immediately rather than after the activity

41

Table 12: S10 When I know my friends are making an error but my teacher does not correct, I

46

47

Table 17: S4 Among these types of errors: phonological errors, syntactic errors, lexical errors,

Table 20: S7 My students will not remember the mistakes if they are corrected after the activity

50

Table 32: Mean, Standard Deviation, Median, Mode by teacher and student groups for S4-1

59

Table 33: Mean, Standard Deviation, Median, Mode by STUDENT group for S5, S6, and S7

60

Table 34: Mean, Standard Deviation, Median, Mode by TEACHER group for S5, S6, and S7

60

Table 36: Mean, Standard Deviation, Median, Mode by teacher and student groups for S8-1

61

Table 38: Mean, Standard Deviation, Median, Mode by teacher and student groups for S8-2

62

Table 42: Mean, Standard Deviation, Median, Mode by teacher and student groups for S10-1

64

Table 44: Mean, Standard Deviation, Median, Mode by teacher and student groups for S10-2

65

Table 46: Mean, Standard Deviation, Median, Mode by teacher and student groups for S11

65

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CA: Communicative Approach

CLT: Communicative Language Teaching L1: First language/ Native language L2: Second language/ Target language OCA: Oral Communicative Activity

SPSS: Statistic Package for Social Science YFLS: Youth Foreign Language School

1.CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

Making errors and mistakes is part of the process of foreign language learning and correcting students’ errors and mistakes is a part of foreign language teaching (Edge J., 1989) However, depending on the theories of language learning and methodologies, there are different viewpoints about what, when and how to correct students’ errors and

mistakes Ur P (2000) summarizes these viewpoints as follows:

Audio-lingualism: learner mistakes are, in principle, avoided by the

limiting of progress to very small, controlled steps: hence there should be little need for correction The latter (positive assessment) is, in any case, not useful for learning; people learn by getting things right in the place and having their

performance reinforced

Cognitive-code learning: Mistakes are regrettable, but an unavoidable

part of learning: they should be corrected whenever they occur to prevent them occurring again

Interlanguage: Mistakes are not regrettable, but an integral and important

part of language learning; correcting them is a way of bringing the learner’s

“interlanguage” closer to the target language (Selinker, 1972, 1992)

Communicative Approach: Not all mistakes need to be corrected: the

main aim of language learning is to receive and convey meaningful messages, and correction should be focused on mistakes that intervene with this aim, not on inaccuracies of usage

Monitor theory: Correction does not contribute to real acquisition of the

language, but only to the learner’s conscious “monitoring” of speech or writing Hence the main activity of the teacher should be to provide comprehensible input, from which the learner can acquire the language, not to correct (Krashen, 1982)

(Ur P., 2000,p 244)

In recent years, there has been a growth in the teaching and learning English for communication in Vietnam, especially when Vietnam joins the WTO Many people are now aware of the necessity of learning English for communication, not just for exams Therefore, there are a lot of classes of “English for Communication” in language schools and language centers which aim at helping students to use English as a mean of

communication These classes have attracted a lot of students who want to study English for communicative purposes

Because these classes usually apply Communicative Approach, which “stresses the importance of providing learners with opportunities to use their English for

communicative purposes” (Howatt, 1984,p 279), “communicative activities” - “any

activity – talk, task, problem project- that involves learners in “real” communication” (Stern H.H., 1993) are used Some of the examples of the most commonly used oral

communicative activities are giving and following instructions, information transfer, information gap, jigsaw, problem solving, informal talk tasks, role-play, drama

techniques, and scenarios etc (Stern H.H., 1993) Oral communicative activities give

learners opportunities to communicate in a meaningful and authentic way

Due to the nature of the Communicative Approach which focuses on students’ fluency rather than on students’ accuracy, teachers tend not to correct students’ errors and mistakes, especially in oral interactions

However, many teachers have experienced some kinds of reactions from their students, such as “Am I correct?”, “Did I say incorrectly?” or “I don’t want to speak

because I don’t know whether I am correct or not”, “I want to speak to teacher because you can correct my mistakes”, or “Why don’t you correct our mistakes?”, etc

These reactions from students show that their expectations towards error

correction seem not compatible with teachers’ beliefs, or a gap might exist between teachers’ beliefs and students’ expectations in error correction in communicative

activities

Therefore, in order to understand the problem more precisely, a research into students’ and teachers’ viewpoints on error treatment in oral communicative activities should be conducted

1.2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this study was three-fold: (1) to investigate the students’

viewpoints on error correction in oral communicative activities, (2) to examine the teachers’ viewpoints about error correction in oral communicative activities and (3) to compare teachers and students’ viewpoints to find out whether teachers’ beliefs and students’ expectations in error correction in oral communicative activities agree with or differ from each other and then give some recommendations on how to improve learning and teaching English in communicative classrooms in Vietnam

1.3 RESEARCH DESIGN

1.3.1 Research Questions This study was designed to answer the three following research questions:

1 What are students’ viewpoints on teachers’ error treatments in oral

communicative activities?

2 What are teachers’viewpoints on students’ errors and error treatments in oral communicative activities?

3 How do students’ viewpointsagree with, or differ from teachers’ ones?

As the problem being investigated was large, multifaceted and involved a lot of participants, a descriptive, quantitative methodology with statistical analyses was selected

to find the answers to the research questions Questionnaires with multiple- choice

statements, statements with Likert-scale and statements using rank-ordered scales were used because collecting and comparing large number of perceptions, attitudes, opinions, etc are difficult with open interviews which use open questions to obtain the data

(Seliger and Shohamy, 2000)

1.3.2 Data Collection Procedures The questionnaires were translated into Vietnamese and were given to 21 teachers and 195 students of English classes at Youth Foreign Language School (YFLS) The students were studying in “English communication classes” which were of different levels of proficiency: Elementary, Pre-intermediate, and Intermediate The responses to

the questionnaires then were collected and analyzed using SPSS (Statistic Package for Social Sciences) software to find the results

1.3.3 Delimitations and Limitations 1.3.3.1 Delimitations

“Delimitations address how the study will be narrowed” (Creswell, 1994, p 110) This study was restricted to error treatments in oral communicative activities and thus did not address error treatments in other activities, such as presentation of grammar points or controlled practices This study was carried out in a foreign language school, Youth Foreign Language School (YFLS), among students of Elementary, Pre-Intermediate and Intermediate levels of English proficiency and teachers who taught these classes, thus any conclusions made about error treatments in this study were limited to this school and students of Elementary, Pre-intermediate and Intermediate levels and teachers who taught these classes, the study did not cover those in other kinds of classes or other levels of proficiency

1.3.3.2 Limitations

“ Limitations identify potential weakness of the study” (Creswell, 1994, p 110) The nature of the study and the research methods of data collection, which used

questionnaire to gather information from a purposive sample, can decrease the

generalizations of the results The results of the study may not be satisfactory enough due

to the lack of time as well as experience of the researcher Moreover, the

recommendations were limited to communicative classes in YFLS, although the findings may be beneficial to others

1.3.4 Assumptions This study was based on these assumptions:

- The sample represented the population of communicative classes at YFLS and these classes really used oral communicative activities

- The data collection and data analysis procedures were appropriate to answer the research questions

- The respondents understood every item of the questionnaires and answered the questions honestly

1.4 DEFINITION OF TERMS Berg (2001,as cited in Phuong Nguyen, 2005) noted that the practice of

operationally defining terms allows everyone to be on the same level of understanding as the researcher who determines the meaning to be applied throughout the research To reduce confusion and facilitate the overall analysis in this study, definitions for the key terms were established

Communicative Activities: Harmer J (1992), Stern H (1993) state that

communicative activities are activities that give students the opportunity to communicate meaningfully in the target language Some of the communicative activities suggested by

Stern H (1993) are: short-term visit to target language community, student exchange, L2 day or lunch meeting , student-teacher interaction, invited native guest speakers, topics and activities arising from learners’ personal life, classroom activities: information transfer, information gap, jigsaw, problem solving, role-play, drama techniques… (p

184)

Communicative Approach: according to Platt J & Platt H (1992), communicative approach is also called communicative language teaching and is referred to approach to

foreign language teaching which emphasizes that the goal of language learning is

communicative competence Harmer J (1992) and Nunan D (1999) also state that communicative approach concentrates on helping learners to communicate meaningfully

in a target language Doggett G (1986) summarizes communicative approach as an approach which focuses on the need to teach communicative competence, functions, not forms, are emphasized and students work with authentic materials in small groups on communicative activities Thus, in communicative approach, students learn to use

language to communicate with each other, such as requesting, describing, expressing themselves, etc they can also use language to perform different tasks, and interact with other people, etc

Communicative Classes: the term is used to refer to classes in which

communicative activities are incorporated at different stages of the learning process The communicative classes are close to the “balanced activities approach” suggested by Harmer J (1992) in which

“the programme will be planned on the basis of achieving a balance between the

communicative activities will tend to predominate over controlled language presentation and practice output.” (p 42)

Errors: Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (Platt

J & Platt H., 1992) defines:

In the speech or writing of a second or foreign language learner), the use of a linguistic item (e.g a word, a grammatical item, a speech act, etc.) in a way which

a fluent or native speaker of the language regards as showing faulty or incomplete learning Errors are sometimes classified according to vocabulary (lexical error), pronunciation (phonological error), grammar (syntactic error), misunderstanding

of a speaker’s communicative effect, e.g through the faulty use of speech act or one of the rules of speaking (pragmatic error)

Mistakes: a mistake made by a learner when writing or speaking and which is caused by lack of attention, fatigue, and carelessness, etc Platt J & Platt H (1992) also believe that mistakes and errors are the same (p 127)

Oral Communicative Activities: communicative activities that “provoke spoken communication between students and/or between the teacher and the students” (Harmer J., 1992,p 122) Harmer J (1992) also suggests some oral communicative activities such

as: reaching a consensus, discussion, relaying instruction, communication game, problem solving, talking about yourself, simulation and role-play, etc

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This study is significant in two ways First, this study helps teachers to learn more about their students and their students’ preferences and expectations in a particular area

of language teaching, error correction The findings of this research will help teachers

decide appropriate strategies to correct students’ errors as researchers and educators (Harmer, 1992; Nunan, 1999; Ur, 2000) believe that language learning is more successful when the teachers’ beliefs and practices are matched with students’ preferences and expectations

Second, this study fills the gaps of previous research Indeed, there are several studies conducted about error correction, but not many of them were about correction in oral communicative activities, especially in the Vietnamese classrooms where students are still affected by “traditional” learning methods which emphasize on accuracy rather than fluency

1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY

This study is organized as follows: Chapter 1 introduces the study Chapter 2 presents a review of literature and research relevant to this study Chapter III describes the research design and methodology Chapter IV offers the discussions and analyses of the findings Chapter V gives the summary and conclusions of the study with some recommendations for further research in the area of English language teaching in

Vietnam

2 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents the review of literature and research about errors in foreign language learning, different viewpoints about error treatment in foreign language teaching and learning, error treatment in oral communicative activities and students’ preferences about error correction

2.1 ERRORS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING

Making errors is an integral part of language learning, because like any other human learning, language learning is a process that involves the making of errors and mistakes (Brown, 2000) Numerous educators and researchers (Brown, 2000; Littlewood, 1987) also believe that when learners make errors, the learning is taking place and in turn, learners can benefit from the form of feedback on those errors

Many researchers and teachers agree that a distinction between mistakes and errors is very important (Brown, 2000; Corder, 1967)

A mistake is a product of the learner when a learner fails to use a known system

correctly and is caused by a number of factors, such as enthusiasm,

over-generalization of rules, interfere from the mother tongue, etc (Mumford & Darn, 2007) everyone can make mistakes, native speakers or language learners A mistake is

unsystematic and can be self-corrected (Brown, 2000)

An error, on the other hand, is repetitive and systematic and reflects a learner’s

competence An error may be a product of the learner’s stage of language development,

or inappropriate teaching or learning (Mumford & Darn, 2007) Errors cannot be corrected and need to be dealt with by teaching or reteaching

self-2.1.1 Types of Errors

An error can be categorized in a variety of ways

2.1.1.1 Overt Errors and Covert Errors:

Corder (1971, as cited in Brown, 2000) suggests that we should identify whether

an error is overt or covert Overt erroneous sentences are sentences that are

grammatically incorrect whereas covert erroneous sentences are sentences that are grammatically correct, but are used inappropriate in the context of communication and then cause misunderstanding or uninterpretable

For instance, the sentence “I student” is an overt erroneous sentence and the correct sentence must be “I’m a student” But “I’m a student” is erroneous if a learner uses it to answer the question “Where are you from?”

Brown (2000) suggests a “simpler and more straightforward terms” for overt and

covert errors are “sentence level” errors and “discourse level” errors

2.1.1.2 Global Errors and Local Errors:

According to Burt & Kiparsky (as cited in Brown, 2000), an error can be viewed

as global or local

Global errors hinder communication and prevent the hearer from understanding the speaker’s message Local errors, on the other hand, do not prevent the hearer from

understanding because they are only minor mistakes and the hearer can still guess the meaning

“Well, it’s a hurry round there” is a global error because it is difficult or

impossible to understand this sentence in many contexts whereas “a trouser” is a local error because it can be understood in many situations (Brown, 2000)

An error can also be classified at the levels of the language or linguistic type: an

error can be a lexical error – vocabulary, a phonological error – pronunciation, a syntactic error – grammar, an interpretive error – misunderstanding of a speaker’s intention or meaning or a pragmatic error – failure to apply the rules of conversation

However, Brown (2000) states that it is not always easy to identify errors at the levels of

language; for instance, a phonological error can also be a lexical error or syntactic error

Donald (2007) suggests that errors can also be categorized by the reason for its production:

- Pre-systematic: error as the result of random guess

- Systematic: error produced while testing out hypotheses

- Post-systematic: a slip of tongue, a lapse, a mistake caused by carelessness,

fatigue

2.1.2 Sources of Errors Making errors is inevitable in the process of learning language There are some causes for the making of errors in language learning

2.1.2.2 Intralingual Transfer

It is now believed that negative intralingual transfer or overgeneralization is a major source of errors in second language learning Researchers (Taylor, 1975) found out that as learner’s progress in the second language, their previous experience and their existing subsumes begin to include structures within the target language itself Some of examples of the errors caused by intralingual transfer are:

- past tense form of the verb following a modal

- present tense –s on a verb following a modal

- -ing on a verb following a modal, etc

2.1.2.3 Context of Learning

According to Brown (2000), “in a classroom context, the teacher or textbook can lead the learners to make faulty hypotheses about the language” (p 226) A misleading

explanation of teacher or an incorrect presentation of a structure or word in the textbook can lead to learners’ errors

2.1.2.4 Communication Strategies

Learners can make errors when they use production strategies to reach a

communicative goal For instance, when a learner does not know how to say a word in English, he/she tries to explain it using his/her own language knowledge (this strategy is called “circumlocution”), but this may lead to an incorrect explanation

2.2 DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS ABOUT ERROR TREATMENT

IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

While researchers and educators agree that making errors is a natural and

unavoidable part of the foreign learning process, there are still arguments about what, when and how to correct an error

The different opinions in error correction may be based on different theories of

language learning and methodologies as Ur (2000) summarized:

“Audio-lingualism: learner mistakes are, in principle, avoided by the

limiting of progress to very small, controlled steps: hence there should be little need for correction The latter (positive assessment) is, in any case, not useful for learning; people learn by getting things right in the place and having their

performance reinforced

Cognitive-code learning: Mistakes are regrettable, but an unavoidable

part of learning: they should be corrected whenever they occur to prevent them occurring again

Interlanguage: Mistakes are not regrettable, but an integral and

important part of language learning; correcting them is a way of bringing the learner’s “interlanguage” closer to the target language

Communicative Approach: Not all mistakes need to be corrected: the

main aim of language learning is to receive and convey meaningful messages, and

correction should be focused on mistakes that intervene with this aim, not on

inaccuracies of usage

Monitor theory: Correction does not contribute to real acquisition of

the language, but only to the learner’s conscious “monitoring” of speech or

writing Hence the main activity of the teacher should be to provide

comprehensible input from which the learner can acquire the language, not to

correct”

Although many teachers and educators nowadays choose a combination of these theories and methodologies in their language teaching, “Correct or not correct?” is still the most important question regarding to correction (Edge, 1990)

While Ur (2000) claims that if teachers pay too much attention to learners’ errors,

it can be very discouraging and demoralizing and it can also distract learners and teachers from the content or hinder communication, and Zoubair (2000) maintains that correcting mistakes should be “kept to the minimum”, other researchers believe that if teachers do not pay enough attention to learners’ errors, these errors will become “fossilized” –

irremediably fixed in the learner’s interlanguage However, many authors (Brown, 2000; Edge, 1990; Harmer, 1994;Hendrickson, 1978 as cited in Krashen, 1987; Ur, 2000;)

agree that errors should be corrected but not all the time

2.2.1 Which Errors should be Corrected?

Edge (1990) suggests “it is more important to correct mistakes which affect the meaning of several sentences than to correct small grammatical points inside one

sentence.” (p 50) Doff (1980) agrees that only serious errors should be corrected Brown (2000) also advises “local errors usually not to be corrected since the message is clear

and correction might interrupt a learner in the flow of productive communication Global errors need to be corrected in some way since the message may otherwise remain

garbled” (p 221) whereas Gover &Walter (1983) suggest that we should only correct a

mistake if a learner asks us to Hendrickson (1978, as cited in Krashen, 1987) maintains that errors should be corrected if:

They are “global” errors, errors that interfere with communication or impede the intelligibility of a message Such errors deserve top priority in correction

Errors that are the most stigmatized, that cause the most unfavorable reactions, are the most important to correct

Errors that occur most frequently should be given top priority

Thus, before correcting an error, teachers should consider the frequency and irritability of the error, whether the error is serious or only a slip of tongue, whether the error affects the meaning of the message and interrupts communication

2.2.2 When should Errors be Corrected?

Many researchers (Doff, 1980; Gover& Walter, 1983; Harmer, 1994; Ur, 2000;) believe that errors can be corrected if it is an accuracy work, because at this stage, the main focus is on grammatical correctness; and if it is a fluency activity, errors should be ignored or delayed so that the correction does not interrupt communication Hendrickson (1978,as cited in Brown, 2000 and Krashen, 1987) also suggests that:

“error correction be limited to ‘manipulative grammar practice’- more errors may

be tolerated during ‘communicative practice’, etc We should focus our students

on form, and correct their errors, only when they have time and when such

diversion of attention does not interfere with communication This implies no error correction in free conversation, but allows for error correction on written work and grammar exercises”

Long (1988, as cited in Brown, 2000) believes that “error treatment and focus on language forms appear to be most effective when incorporated into a communicative, learned-centered curriculum and least effective when error correction is a dominant pedagogical feature, occupying the focal attention of students in the classrooms.” (p 234)

2.2.3 Who should Correct the Errors Edge (1990) advises that teachers should not correct the mistakes but they should show students that a mistake has been made and the students should correct the mistake

themselves This kind of correction is called self-correction If the students cannot correct

the mistake, teachers can ask another student or the whole class to correct This kind of

correction is called peer-correction Peer-correction is very useful because students can

learn how to cooperate and help them less dependent on teachers However, if students are not used to correcting each other, it can be useless or even damaging And if that student cannot correct his/her mistake nor other students in the class, then teachers have

to correct it, called teacher-correction But Edge (1990) also emphasizes that “correction

should not mean insisting on everything being absolutely correct Correction means

helping students to become more accurate in their use of language” (p 33)

2.2.4 How should Errors be Corrected Hendrickson (as cited in Krashen, 1987) provides the two most widely used methods of correction:

- providing the correct form (“direct” correction)

- the discovery (inductive) approach

(Krashen, 1987, p 118) However, Hendrickson, as well as Brown (2000) also note that research on error correction still cannot conclude which method is the most effective, but some research shows that direct correction is not effective, students who had had direct correction of their oral and written work did not produce fewer errors

Krashen (1987), on the other hand, claims that teacher correction is not effective and will not produce results that they expected

In summary, error correction is still an argumentative matter in foreign language learning and teaching However, we should also consider a taxonomy suggested by Bailey (1985, as cited in Brown, 2000):

Basic Options:

1 To treat or ignore

2 To treat immediately or to delay

3 To transfer treatment (to, say, other learners) or not

4 To transfer to another individual, a subgroup, or the whole class

5 To return, or not, to original error maker after treatment

6 To permit other learners to initiate treatment

7 To test for the efficacy of the treatment

2.3 ERROR TREATMENT IN ORAL COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES

Nowadays, many teachers agree that “the main concern as language teachers is

not to inform our students about the language but to develop their ability to use the language for a variety of communicative purposes” (Byrne, 1991, p 1), and “the aim of

our teaching is to train students for communicative efficiency” (Harmer, 1994, p 42) that

is why communicative activities are commonly incorporated into the production stage of the learning process

2.3.1 Oral Communicative Activities

According to Stern (1993), “the term ‘Communicative Activity’ designates

motivated activities, topics and themes which involve the learner in authentic

communication.” (p 177) Harmer (1994) uses the term “Communicative Output” to

“refer to activities in which students use language as a vehicle for communication

because their main purpose is to complete some kinds of communicative tasks” (p 40)

Harmer (1994) suggests some oral communicative activities such as: reaching a consensus, discussion, relaying instructions, communication games, problem solving, talking about yourself, simulation and role-play Doff (1988) recommends “guessing games, information gap exercises, personal information exchange” (p 208) Ur (2000) advocates “pair work, group work, discussion, role-play” as some of the most commonly

used forms of oral communicative activities Whereas Littewood (1991) proposes to

distinguish communicative activities as “functional communicative activities” which

emphasize on functional efficiency and “social communicative activities” which focus on

successful social interaction

Although different methodologists suggest different activities, all of these

activities create opportunities for learners to use English to communicate meaningfully with other learners

2.3.2 Error Correction in Oral Communicative Activities

Although many researchers and educators (Doff, 1980; Gover& Walter, 1983; Harmer, 1994; Ur, 2000;) agree that errors should be corrected when the activity focus is

on accuracy and errors should be ignored or delayed if students are in a fluency activity, there are still disagreements about error treatment in communicative activities

While Edge (1990) claims that “spoken accuracy is most important for our

learners when they are practicing carefully something that has just been presented to them” (p 23), Truscott (1999) maintains that “oral correction does not improve learners’ ability to speak grammatically” (p 1) He also gave evidence from research of Frantzen (1995), Kadia (1988), Schumann (1978), which showed that oral correction was

ineffective DeKeyser’s studies (1993) showed that “there was no overall effect for correction” and he concludes that “oral correction should be abandoned” (p 10) Krashen (1987) also emphasizes that correction is not effective

However, many teachers believe that errors can be used “as a type of input to promote learners’ acquisition process” (Gebhard, 1996, p 189) Lynch and Maclean (2003) also found out in their studies that “ the learner’s perception of the value and

effect of feedback were matched by real improvements in their spoken performance” (p 1)

Then, if teachers have decided to correct an error in oral communicative activities, they also have to consider these questions: Which errors should be treated? When should errors be corrected? Who should treat them? How can they be treated?

Hendrickson (as cited in Krashen, 1987) claims that we should correct the

mistakes that affect communication or mistakes that are common among students or mistakes that are irritating to someone Littlewood (1991), however, states that teachers should not correct linguistic errors because students will then believe that linguistic forms are more important than meanings in communication If teachers want to correct

linguistic errors, they should do it in pre-communicative activities, which are somewhat controlled, not in communicative activities In Huynh Thi Thu Suong’s thesis (2006) when she conducted a research about correction of spoken errors in her university, she found that teacher treated lexical and discourse errors most and grammar errors were treated more often than pronunciation errors (p 68)

Because the focus of communicative activities is in communication, not linguistic forms, Littlewood (1991) suggests that if there are some mistakes, correction should be delayed until after the activity Edge (1990) also adds that if teachers correct one error during a communicative activity, they will miss many others Instead, they should walk around the class, listen to students doing their activity, note down the commonest

mistakes and then write them on the board so that students can correct them after the

activity In her study, however, Huynh Thi Thu Suong (2006), found that teachers

preferred immediate treatment techniques more than delayed ones (p 68)

Many researchers and educators (Doff, 1980; Edge, 1990; Hadfield, 1997;

Harmer, 1994) agree that the teachers should go around the class and listen, if there are some mistakes, teachers will note down They will write them on the board after the activity and the whole class will discuss how to correct them If teachers have to correct, they should do it in a “natural and relaxed way”

How should errors be corrected in a communicative activity? Some teachers give

an explicit correction whereas other teachers can choose implicit correction or let

students correct the errors themselves When teachers correct the errors explicitly, they show students what the mistakes are and provide them with the correct form Teachers can choose to correct the errors implicitly by using fingers, gestures to show students that they have made a mistake; or by reformulating students’ utterances or by indicating that what the students have said is unclear or incorrect with a marked intonation to highlight the errors While Gebhard (1996) maintains that teachers should make it clear to students that their mistakes are being treated, Byrne (1991) states that when teachers have to correct an error, do it obliquely rather than directly, so that the learners perceive their mistakes for themselves And Ur (2000) agrees that correction should be “tactful and encouraging”

Doff (1980) adds that teachers should “avoid humiliating students or making them feel that making a mistake is bad” (p 190) and teachers should correct errors quickly

2.4 STUDENTS’ PREFERENCES

In his research, Ueno (1997, cited in Ueno, 2007) found out that while teachers tended not to correct students’ errors because error correction could be harmful and should be avoided, consequently, they avoided making students uncomfortable or

embarrassed when correcting their errors and admitted the need to ignore errors, students preferred that their errors being corrected more often And while teachers tended to offer answers without challenging them or without providing a chance for self-correction, students wanted to be independent and take the responsibility for learning by applying their own error correction

Swift S (2006) also found out that while teachers thought that “correcting the errors is less important than boosting the students’ confidence by reacting positively to the communicative value of the utterance” (p 2), students found it confused because some students might find that there was something wrong, but then not sure Some students also believed that if teachers did not correct errors, they were not “teaching” at all

In her research on treatment of spoken errors, Huynh Thi Thu Suong (2006) discovered that students were afraid of making errors when they involved in speaking activities and they wished their mistakes were treated more often in class She also found that while teachers treated lexical and discourse errors most, students preferred their grammatical errors to be treated to pronunciation errors and most students “supported immediate treatment techniques more than delayed ones” (p 68)

However, Ueno (1999) pointed out from his research that students who have different learning styles can have different attitudes towards error correction Dekeyser (1995, as cited from Ueno, 1999) also indicated that “the role of error correction may vary depending on learner characteristics such as their age, IQ, learning styles and

motivation.” (P 16)

Thus, not only researchers and educators have different viewpoints about error correction, teachers and students have different opinions about error correction as well, as Nunan (1993, cited from Ueno, 1999) stated “one of the instructional components

students and teachers most disagreed upon was error correction” (p 17)

2.5 SUMMARY

This chapter has presented the review of literature and research relevant to error and error treatment in foreign language teaching: errors in foreign language learning, different viewpoints about error treatment in foreign language learning, error treatment in oral communicative activities and students’ preferences concerning what errors should be treated, when and how errors should be treated and who should treat the errors Though there are several research studies concerning treatment on spoken errors, there are no studies about error correction in oral communicative activities, especially in Vietnamese classrooms

3 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

The purpose of this study is: (1) to examine the student’s viewpoints on error correction in oral communicative activities, (2) to investigate the teachers’ viewpoints about error correction in oral communicative activities, and (3) to compare students’ and teachers’ viewpoints to find out whether teachers’ beliefs and students’ preferences and expectations towards error correction in oral communicative activities agree with or differ from each other

This chapter presents and discusses the research design used for this study, the subjects of the study, the instruments, the pilot study, the data collection procedures, and data analysis procedures

3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN

The descriptive quantitative design was chosen for this study based on the

research questions, the nature of the study, as stated in Creswell (1994) “a quantitative study based on testing a theory composed of variables, measured with numbers, and analyzed with statistical procedures, in order to determine whether the predictive

generalization of the theory hold true ” (p 2) and “for quantitative studies, the problem evolves from the literature, so a substantial body of literature exists on which the

researcher can build variables are known and theories may exist that need to be tested and verified ” (p 10)

The problem being investigated in this study was large and multifaceted The purpose of this study was to compare the responses from a large group of participants by involving a lot of participants, the teachers and the students, that made the results

statistically significant and generalizable; thus, a descriptive quantitative design was needed

The nature of the data also required questionnaires with multiple-choice

statements and statements to rate on a Likert-scale, as stated by Freeman and Long

(1993) “questionnaires are often used to get language learners to self-report their attitudes

or personal characteristics” (p 36) and Brown (1991) “Likert-scale’s questions are

effective in gathering respondents’ views, opinions, and attitudes about various related issues”(p 41)

language-After being collected, the data was organized into categories and computed into

frequencies and percentages, the frequencies and percentages were then correlated with other data categories, such as central tendencies (the mean, the mode and the median) and variabilities (the standard deviation and the variance), as described in Seliger and

Sholamy (2000):

There are three common procedures for obtaining descriptive information about the data of a study: frequencies, central tendencies (principally the mean), and variabilities (the standard deviation and the variance) This type of information may be the main purpose of the research it is also required for more complex types of analysis, and can provide the researcher with a greater insight into and understanding of the data to be analyzed (p 218)

3.2 POPULATION AND SAMPLE

This research was carried out among the teachers and students at Youth Foreign Language School in Ho Chi Minh City This school was selected because it is one of the biggest language schools in Ho Chi Minh City with approximately 3,300 students

studying in 165 classes and 97 teachers It is also one of the most successful schools, which use communicative activities in the teaching Most of classes in this school are

“communicative classes” which focus on giving students opportunities to use English in communication, thus, communicative activities are widely used in these classes The communicative classes are classified into three levels: Elementary, Pre-intermediate and Intermediate Students need six months to complete one level and each level is then divided into three sub-classes, which lasts two months each However, not all classes at this school are communicative classes, there are also classes which focus on grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation Therefore, the survey population of this study was only communicative classes of three levels of English proficiency: Elementary, Pre-

intermediate and Intermediate

The purposive sampling which based on the convenience and availability of the respondents was used in selecting the participants Creswell (1994) maintains that

purposive sampling is “less desirable” than random sampling because “the findings of the study may not be generalized to the entire population” (p 120) In order to increase the validity of the study, only the teachers who have taught all the three levels were chosen although at the time of participating in the study, they were not teaching all the three

levels There were 21 teachers representing the total number of 97 teachers at YFLS and

195 students representing 3,300 students who were studying at YFLS The teachers who had taught all three levels were invited to participate in the study If they agreed to take part in the study, their students were also invited, however, the students were free to respond to the questionnaires or not

3.3 INSTRUMENTS

According to Seliger and Shohamy (2000), instruments used in descriptive

quantitative research are that “data collection instruments require in the response of the

subjects” (p 126) and can include: tests, surveys and questionnaires, self-reports and interviews, as well as observations

Survey questionnaire was selected for this study because questionnaire was useful for collecting data from large groups of subjects (Seliger and Shohamy, 2000), and it was usually used in getting learners to “self-report their attitudes and personal characteristics” (Freeman and Long, 1994, p 35) and to “answer any research questions that require exploration, description, or explanation of people’s characteristics, attitudes, views and opinions” (Brown& Rodgers, 2002, p 147) Questionnaire was also chosen because this type of instruments is low-cost, easy to administer, convenient and the data can be

collected rapidly (Creswell, 2002).There are also some disadvantages in using

questionnaires Seliger and Shohamy (2000) noted that:

“one of the main problems with questionnaires is the relatively low response rate…A low return rate may influence the validity of the findings Another problem with questionnaires is that they are not appropriate for subjects who