Focus on form in the foreign language classroom: EFL college learners' attitudes toward error correction.

摘要

In the field of second language (L2) pedagogy, whether to correct learner errors in the classroom is a long-debated issue. Perspectives on the utility of error correction are differently proposed in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theories and approaches. Especially after the prosperity of communicative approaches fluency and expressing of meaning have been emphasized almost to the point of completely denying the necessity of treating learner errors in the language classroom.; Nevertheless, a growing number of researchers and teachers have begun to reevaluate the role error correction plays in the second language classroom, and almost all results and arguments favor error correction in L2 learning. Yet, how do EFL teachers respond to their adult learners' errors in class? What are EFL adult learners' attitudes toward error correction? Are EFL teachers' error correction practices consonant with their adult learners' preferences? Not much literature can be found addressing these topics. The present study is thus designed to answer these questions and contribute to our understanding of EFL learners. Results indicate that EFL adult learners regard error correction as necessary for various reasons such as fear of fossilization, fear of not being aware of their errors, and so on. While some students are willing to be corrected every time they make an error, others do not like it for various affective reasons. Nevertheless, though students view each type of error correction differently, not a single student likes interruption as a manner of teacher negative feedback. EFL teachers predominantly use recasts and elicitation in response to student errors while their students like being corrected with a wide variety of types of error correction, explicit correction and repetition of error being the most preferred types. The distribution of types of error correction teachers employ does not conform with college learners' preferences; futhermore, teachers of different class types do not different with regard to either types or amounts of error correction.