VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG LUYẾN An investigation into teachers’ correction and its effects on non-English majored students’ motivation and improvement in learning pre-ESP subject at Viettronics Technology College (Tìm hiểu việc sửa lỗi của giáo viên và ảnh hưởng của nó đối với hứng thú và tiến bộ của sinh viên tiếng Anh không chuyên trong học tập môn học tiếng Anh cơ sở tại trường Cao đẳng Công nghệ Viettronics) M. MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Hanoi - 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG LUYẾN An investigation into teachers’ correction and its effects on non-English majored students’ motivation and improvement in learning pre-ESP subject at Viettronics Technology College (Tìm hiểu việc sửa lỗi của giáo viên và ảnh hưởng của nó đối với hứng thú và tiến bộ của sinh viên tiếng Anh không chuyên trong học tập môn học tiếng Anh cơ sở tại trường Cao đẳng Công nghệ Viettronics) M. MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: Phùng Thị Kim Dung, M. Hanoi - 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration.
ii Table of contents.iii List of charts and tables. Aims of the study. Methods of the study. Scope of the study.
Significance of the study. Design of the study. Definitions of terminologies. 5 CHAPTER 1 – LITERATURE REVIEW.
Perspectives on learner errors in foreign language learning. Errors as failure. Errors as positive aids to learning. Error correction and foreign language progress.
Negative perspectives of error correction. Positive perspectives of error correction. Error treatment and learning motivation. Error correction in an integrated-instruction form language teaching context.
Forms of error correction. Self-correction to oral work. Self-correction to written work. Peer-correction to oral work.
Peer-correction to written work. Teacher-correction to oral work. Teacher-correction to written work. 16 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv CHAPTER 2 – THE STUDY.
Setting of the study. Subjects and instrumentations. Analysis of teachers’ survey questionnaire. Analysis of students’ survey questionnaire.
Analysis of the experimental and control groups’ pre-test and post-test results. Comparison of linguistic competence in pre-test between the treatment group and control group. Comparison of linguistic competence in the pre-test and post-test within groups. Comparison of linguistic competence between groups.
Findings and discussion. Teachers’ perceptions of error/mistake correction and their corrective practices. The effects of teachers’ correction practices on students’ pre-ESP learning motivation. The effect of teachers’ correction techniques on students’ learning improvement.
II APPENDIX III. IV APPENDIX IV. IX APPENDIX VI. XI APPENDIX VII.
XIII APPENDIX VIII .XIV LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com v LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES Name Page Chart 1 – The role of error correction in English learning as perceived by teachers 20 Chart 2 – Oral mistakes most corrected by the teachers 21 Chart 3 - Written mistakes most corrected by the teachers 22 Chart 4 – The most useful correction type as perceived by the teachers 23 Chart 5 – The importance of error correction from the students’ perceptions 24 Chart 6 – Oral mistakes which the students most liked to be corrected 25 Chart 7 - Written mistakes which the students most liked to be treated 25 Chart 8 - The most useful correction type as perceived by the students 26 Table 1 – Factors affecting teachers’ decision of correction 20 Table 2 – Types and frequency of teachers’ correction 23 Table 3 – The relationship between teachers’ correction and students’ learning 27 motivation Table 4 – Pre-test means of the experimental and control groups 28 Table 5 – Descriptive statistics for the pre-test and post-test scores of the 28 experimental and control groups. Table 6 – Mean gains of the experimental and control groups 29 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -1- PART A - Introduction 1. Rationale Making mistakes/errors is natural in learning any language including English. As an Italian proverb goes “Sbagliando s’impara”, which means “We learn through our errors,” it is commonly agreed that mistakes and errors are indispensable parts in the learning process, and correction should be included in productive English lessons.
Surprisingly, the history of foreign language teaching and learning research has witnessed contradictory opinions on the effects of correction on learner’s English improvement. On the one hand, scholars like Truscott (1996), Krashen (1978), Semke (1984), and many others found negative impacts as a result of this classroom practice. On the other hand, linguists like Chaudron (1986), Hendrickson (1984), Ferris (1999), Corder (1973) and Ellis (1989) maintain significant usefulness of error correction in learner’s learning success. Moreover, despite being one form of teacher-student classroom interaction and closely related to learners’ interest in learning in that it may either motivate or demotivate learners, how error correction affects learners’ learning motivation has not been adequately studied.
Therefore, the effects of correction on motivation and improvement deserve more detailed studies. In Vietnam nowadays, with the increasingly important role of English in the society, in most colleges where students major in information technology, accounting, business administration, electronics and electric technology or else other than English, freshmen are required to attend a pre-ESP course in preparation for their ESP courses. At Viettronics Technology College (VTC), English is taught as a basic science to assist their work in the future. In the curriculum, it is one of the compulsory subjects that have to be taken by first- year students before they take ESP courses in their second or third year.
The aims of the course are to help students improve their English communicative skills and more importantly, enhance their linguistic knowledge so as to successfully deal with ESP materials. Lifelines Elementary is chosen as the course book. Students need to practice pieces of grammar and learn the vocabulary needed for speaking, reading, listening and writing activities. They are almost at the same low level of English proficiency, so error making is unavoidable.
Mistakes and errors occurring in this English course are in both spoken and written forms including those on grammar, pronunciation, word use and word/sentence meaning. Understandably, teachers’ correction does follow as an attempt to fix these problems. However, what might be unknown to these practitioners is the level of impact that their corrective practices assert on the language motivation and improvement of their students. In the context of pre-ESP LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -2- teaching and learning of teachers and non-English majored students at VTC, it is worth our effort to investigate teachers’ corrective practices as well as how they influence students’ motivation and improvement in learning pre-ESP subject.
Aims of the study The aims of this study are threefold: - To investigate teachers’ perceptions of error/mistake correction and their corrective practices. - To investigate the effect of teachers’ correction practice on students’ pre-ESP learning motivation. - To investigate the effect of teachers’ correction techniques on students’ learning improvement. Research questions - What do teachers think of the role of mistake/error correction in English learning? What factors affect their decision of correction? - What are teachers’ correction practices in pre-ESP classes? (What kind of mistakes do teachers correct most? What is the amount of correction do they offer in a pre-ESP lesson? What types of correction do they often use to correct students in pre-ESP classes?) - What are students’ opinions on their teachers’ correction? How do teachers’ corrective practices affect their students’ learning motivation? - What is the effect of teachers’ error correction on the students’ learning improvement in terms of linguistic competence? The answer to this question will reveal the acceptance of either the hypothesis that + The students who receive error correction will make more improvement in linguistic competence than those who receive no error correction at all.
+ There is no difference in learning improvement (in terms of linguistic competence) between the experimental group and the control group. Methods of the study The instrumentations employed in this study are as follows: - Two questionnaires to investigate teachers’ perceptions of correction as well as its relation to students’ attitudes and motivation in learning pre-ESP. - Classroom observation to collect more information about teachers’ correction practices. - A quasi-experiment to work out if the teachers’ correction does lead to the students’ improvement in language learning.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Scope of the study Given that the teachers’ perceptions of error/mistake correction and their corrective practices as well as the effects of their error correction on students’ pre-ESP learning motivation and improvement are the foci of the study, this paper does not try to investigate written or oral error correction in details. Instead, it deals with error correction of both kinds, which always occurs in a pre-ESP lesson. Moreover, error correction is too broad a part of study in English language teaching, so this paper only focuses on teachers’ correction and its effects on non-English majored students’ motivation and improvement in learning pre-ESP subject at Viettronics Technology College.
First-year VTC students have to take two pre-ESP courses. The first course aims at improving students in their four common communicative skills and the three language elements while the second, apart from focusing on the language areas as mentioned above, intends to enhance their linguistic knowledge so as to assist them in processing and responding to the ESP materials. Therefore, students’ improvement in this study refers to that in linguistic competence. Finally, the relationship between motivation and improvement lies beyond the scope of our investigation.
Significance of the study This study, with the view to investigating the effects of teachers’ correction on students’ motivation and improvement in learning pre-ESP subject, hopes to bring a thorough look at one of the influential factors to the teaching and learning of a specific subject. Additionally, it reveals a fact that though grammatical error correction is considered unnecessary by many scholars, it still receives much attention by both teachers and students. A discussion on useful and effective correction will also make this paper a worth-reading reference document for those who care about this pedagogical issue. Design of the study This study contains three parts: - Part A – Introduction covers an overview of the study in which the rationale, aims, research questions, methods, scopes, significance as well as design and definitions of terminologies of the study.
- Part B – Development deals with a review of related literature, the setting, the methods, data analysis, and findings and discussions of the data collected. - Part C – Conclusion sums up the main findings of the study and presents the limitations as well as recommendations for further study. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Definitions of terminologies 8.
Error: “A systematic deviation from the accepted code. Mistake: “A non-systematic deviation from the language code indicating incomplete learning. Correction: A way of reminding learners of the forms of standard language. Feedback: Listener or reader’s responses provided to the learner’s spoken or written production.
Feedback covers two terms: assessment and correction. In this paper, feedback refers to correction, thus, the terms “feedback”, “error correction”, “error treatment” and “corrective feedback” can be interchangeably used. Language acquisition: The process of learning a native or a second language. Motivation: “The extent to which the individual works or strives to learn the language because of a desire to do so and the satisfaction experienced in this activity.
Improvement: The process of something becoming better. (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary) LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -5- part B - Development CHAPTER 1 – LITERATURE REVIEW 1.