4. CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
4.2 RESEARCH QUESTION 1: STUDENTS’VIEWPOINTS
This section presents the student’s viewpoints about error correction in oral communicative activities. The results will be organized by statements.
In responding to S1 “I am not afraid of making errors when I am speaking in class”, although there were 58 students (29.8%) who strongly disagreed or disagreed, over half of the respondents, 115 students (59.0%) agreed and strongly agreed that they were not afraid of making errors when they were speaking in class. There were 22 students (11.3%) neither disagreed nor agreed with the statement (Table 3)
Table 3: S1 I am not afraid of making errors when I am speaking in class
N=195 0 missing Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Strongly disagree 4 2.1 2.1 2.1
Disagree 54 27.7 27.7 29.7 Undecided 22 11.3 11.3 41.0 Agree 87 44.6 44.6 85.6 Strongly agree 28 14.4 14.4 100.0
Total 195 100.0 100.0
The result of S2 which aimed at finding out how students felt when they made an error showed that over 40.0% of students felt “normal”. However, there were 30 students (15.4%) felt “unhappy” and more than one third of students (37.4%) were embarrassed with their errors (Table 4)
Table 4: S2 When I make an error, I feel:
N=195 0 missing Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
Unhappy 30 15.4 15.4 15.4 Embarrassed 73 37.4 37.4 52.8 Normal 83 42.6 42.6 95.4 Happy 3 1.5 1.5 96.9 Others 6 3.1 3.1 100.0 Total 195 100.0 100.0
Table 5 shows the result of S3 “I don’t want my teacher to correct my errors when I speak in class”. Although more than half of the students (59.0%) thought that they were not afraid of making errors and 42.6% believed that making errors were just
“normal” thing, over 65% of them disagreed with the statement and showed that they expected their teachers to correct their errors when they were speaking in class. 29.8% of the surveyed students didn’t want to be corrected and 4.6% of those who responded chose
“undecided”.
Table 5: S3 I don’t want my teacher to correct my errors when I am speaking in class N=195 0 missing Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Strongly disagree 39 20.0 20.0 20.0
Disagree 89 45.6 45.6 65.6 Undecided 9 4.6 4.6 70.3 Agree 29 14.9 14.9 85.1 Strongly agree 29 14.9 14.9 100.0
Total 195 100.0 100.0
In responding to S4 which asked them to rank the type of errors which they most liked to be corrected, nearly two-thirds of students, 127 of them, (65.1%) chose
“phonological errors” whereas only 13.3% put priority on syntactic errors and 6.7%
wanted teachers to correct their lexical errors. 14.9% of the students would like discourse errors to be corrected. The students seemed not agree with each other in choosing the second most important type of errors which needed to be corrected when 33.8% of them chose lexical errors, 23.6% wanted syntactic errors to be corrected, discourse errors were chosen by 23.1% of the students and 19.0% chose phonological errors (Table 6)
Table 6: S4 Among these types of errors: phonological errors, syntactic errors, lexical errors, discourse errors, the errors that I want to be corrected most are
N=195 0 missing Phonological
errors Syntactic errors Lexical errors Discourse errors
Count 127 26 13 29 First
choice Percent 65.1 13.3 6.7 14.9
Count 38 46 66 45 Second
Choice Percent 19.5 23.6 33.8 23.1
Count 24 56 74 41 Third
Choice Percent 12.3 28.7 37.9 21.0
Count 6 67 42 80 Fourth
Choice Percent 3.1 34.4 21.5 41.0
Count 195 195 195 195 Total
Percent 100 100 100 100
S5, S6 and S7 aimed at finding student’s preference about when teachers should correct their errors. Table 7 shows that the majority of respondents (91.8 %) agreed with S5 “I prefer my teacher to correct my errors immediately rather than after the activity”
while only 8.2% disagreed. The mean 4.3 (Appendix E) also indicated that most students wanted their teachers to correct the errors immediately rather than delay after the activity.
Thus, 54 students (27.7%) felt “happy” and 116 of them (59.5%) felt “normal” when teachers corrected their errors at the time they made the errors (Table 8). 88 respondents (45.1%) were not happy when teachers did not correct their errors immediately (Table 9).
Table 7: S5 I prefer my teacher to correct my errors immediately rather than after the activity N=195 0 missing Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
Disagree 10 5.1 5.1 5.1 Undecided 6 3.1 3.1 8.2 Agree 93 47.7 47.7 55.9 Strongly agree 86 44.1 44.1 100.0
Total 195 100.0 100.0
Table 8: S6 When my teacher corrects my errors immediately, I feel:
N=195 0 missing Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
Unhappy 9 4.6 4.6 4.6 Embarrassed 13 6.7 6.7 11.3 Normal 116 59.5 59.5 70.8 Happy 54 27.7 27.7 98.5 Others 3 1.5 1.5 100.0 Total 195 100.0 100.0
Table 9: S7 when my teacher corrects my errors after the activity, I feel:
N=195 0 missing Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
Unhappy 88 45.1 45.1 45.1 Embarrassed 9 4.6 4.6 49.7 Normal 68 34.9 34.9 84.6 Happy 9 4.6 4.6 89.2 Others 21 10.8 10.8 100.0 Total 195 100.0 100.0
Tables 10 and 11 show how respondents wanted their teachers to correct their errors: 178 of them (91.3%) preferred their teachers to tell them explicitly which part of the sentence was wrong to indicate the errors but not tell explicitly or say nothing about their errors. Similarly, 163 of the students participated in the survey (83.6%) wanted their teachers to give them the correct answer while 24 students (12.3%) preferred their
teachers to show them the error but let them to correct it themselves. Only a small number of participants, 2.1%, wanted a friend to correct their error.
Table 10: S8 When I make an error, I want:
N=195 0 missing Teacher tells explicitly Teacher indicates, but
not tell explicitly Teacher doesn’t say anything
Count 178 15 2 First
choice Percent 91.3 7.7 1.0
Count 16 169 10 Second
Choice Percent 8.2 86.7 5.1
Count 1 11 183
Third
Choice Percent 0.5 5.6 93.8
Count 195 195 195 Total
Percent 100 100 100
Table 11: S9 When I make an error, the way I want it to be corrected most is
N=195 0 missing Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Teacher gives correct answers 163 83.6 83.6 83.6 Teacher shows errors and let
me correct 24 12.3 12.3 95.9 Teacher asks a friend to correct 4 2.1 2.1 97.9 Others 4 2.1 2.1 100.0 Total 195 100.0 100.0
As can be seen from Table 12, when someone made an error and teacher did not correct it, 82 participants (42.1%) believed that it was because “my teacher wants us to speak freely” and 22 students (11.3%) thought that because “my teacher does not want to upset us”. However, there were nearly half of the participants had a negative attitude
towards this case when 64 (32.8%) of them thought that because “teacher is busy” and 27 of them (13.8%) believed that their teacher did not care about what they were saying.
Table 12: S10 When I know my friends are making an error but my teacher does not correct, I think the reason is:
N=195 0 missing Teacher is busy Teacher does not care
Teacher wants us to speak freely
Teacher does not want to upset us
Count 64 27 82 22 First
choice Percent 32.8 13.8 42.1 11.3
Count 43 47 45 60 Second
Choice Percent 22.1 24.1 23.1 30.8
Count 60 44 56 35 Third
Choice Percent 30.8 22.6 28.7 17.9
Count 28 77 12 78 Fourth
Choice Percent 14.4 39.5 6.2 40.0
Count 195 195 195 195 Total
Percent 100 100 100 100
In responding to S11 “Generally, I want my teacher to let us speak freely without correction”, 41 students (21.0%) strongly disagreed and 123 (63.1%) disagreed while 13 (6.6%) agreed and 18 (9.2%) undecided. The result showed that students would like their teachers to correct their errors even in oral communicative activities, which focus on fluency rather than accuracy. (Table 13)
Table 13: S11 Generally, I want my teacher to let us speak freely without correction:
N=195 0 missing Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Strongly disagree 41 21.0 21.0 21.0
Disagree 123 63.1 63.1 84.1 Undecided 18 9.2 9.2 93.3 Agree 11 5.6 5.6 99.0 Strongly agree 2 1.0 1.0 100.0
Total 195 100.0 100.0
Thus responses from student’s questionnaires showed that although over half of the surveyed students believed that they were not afraid of making errors when they were speaking in class, more than one third of them thought that they were afraid, this finding
was different from those of Huynh Thi Thu Suong (2006) which found that students were afraid of making errors. A possible explanation for this is that her study was about spoken errors in other stages of learning and teaching process as well, such as presentation and practice, while this study concentrated on oral communicative activities.
Similarly, nearly half of the students believed that they would feel “normal” when they made a mistake while the other half of them thought they would feel “unhappy” or
“embarrassed”. In spite of this, nearly two thirds of the surveyed students wanted their teacher to correct their errors when they were speaking. This finding was consistent with that of Huynh Thi Thu Suong’s study (2006) and Ueno (2007). This can be explained that although students were taking part in communicative activities, they were still affected by traditional way of learning which emphasizes on accuracy rather than fluency.
The type of errors that they would expect their teachers to correct most was phonological errors. The result differed from Huynh Thi Thu Suong’s (2006), probably because this study was about error correction in oral communicative activities when students were involved in speaking and not in other practice activities while her study was about treatments of spoken errors in general.
Most of the students also wanted their teachers to correct their errors immediately rather than delaying after the activity. Similarly, most students preferred their teachers to tell them clearly about the errors and give them the correct answers rather than just indicating that there were something wrong and let them to correct the errors themselves or asking a friend to help them correct it. This finding was not consistent with Ueno (2007) when he found that students wanted to be independent and take the responsibility
in studying. A possible explanation for this might be that our students are quite “passive”
as some teachers noticed.
Although over half of students who responded to the questionnaire had a positive attitude towards non-correction, the other half of them believed that if their teachers did not correct their mistakes it was because they were too busy or they did not care about what they were speaking. The result seemed to confirm Swift S. (2006) who stated that if teachers did not correct the error, students would be confused and they might think that teachers did not “teach” at all. In spite of the fact that more than half of students might think “teacher want to let us speak freely” or “teacher does not want to upset us”, most of them would like their teachers to correct their mistakes rather than let them speak freely without correction.