VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HOCHIMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE ����� AN INVESTIGATION INTO EFL TEACHERS' AND STUDENTS' ATTITUDES TOWARDS ORAL ERROR CORRECTION AT ESC ENGLISH LANGUAGE CENTER - HCM A thesis submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in TESOL By NGUYEN PHUONG THAO Supervised by DUNG,, Ph. DOAN HUE DUNG HO CHI MINH CITY, JUNE 2016 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the people without whose support the completion of this thesis would have been impossible. First and foremost, I am profoundly indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Doan Hue Dung, for her invaluable assistance and insightful comments from the beginning to the completion of the thesis.
Without her constant guidance, I should have lost the right directions at the very first stage of the research. My sincere thanks also go to the director as well as students and teachers at ESC English language center, especially those who willingly took part in the data collection for the study. If it had not been their support, this study would not have been possible. I would like to extend my deep gratitude to my dear friends, especially Do Thi Thanh An, Ho Thi Bich Nhu, Le Thi Yen Uyen and Vo Thi Thien An for their useful advice and encouragement which helped me go through many ups and downs during the course of this endeavor.
And last but not least, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my beloved family for the endless love and care they have given to me. Although they barely touched upon a single page of this thesis, they would not know that it was their wholehearted support and enormous sacrifice that kept me fighting till the end to have the study completed. Many sincere thanks to them all, the great contributors to this thesis. i STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: AN INVESTIGATION INTO EFL TEACHERS' AND STUDENTS' ATTITUDES TOWARDS ORAL ERROR CORRECTION AT ESC ENGLISH LANGUAGE CENTER - HCM in terms of the statement of the Requirements for the Theses in Master's Program issued by the Higher Degree Committee.
This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institutions. Ho Chi Minh City, 2016 NGUYEN PHUONG THAO ii RETENTION OF USE I hereby state that I, NGUYEN PHUONG THAO, being the candidate for the degree of Master of Arts in TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master's theses deposited in the Library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan or reproduction of the thesis. Ho Chi Minh City, 2016 NGUYEN PHUONG THAO iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements.i Statement of originality.ii Retention of use.
iii Table of contents. iv List of abbreviations. viii List of tables.ix List of figures. xi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 INTRODUCTION.
Background to the study. Aims of the study. Significance of the study. Scope of the study.
Outline of the thesis. 5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW REVIEW. Definition of attitudes. The importance of attitudes and how to change them.
Definition of errors in EFL teaching context. Errors, Mistakes and Attempts. Views on errors. Sources of errors.
Types of errors. Definition of error correction in EFL teaching context. Views on error correction. For error correction.
Against error correction. Oral error correction. Views on oral error correction. Dealing with oral errors.
What types of oral errors should be corrected?. When should oral errors be corrected?. How should oral errors be corrected?. Lyster and Ranta's model.
Some other techniques. Who should do the correction. Influential factors in correcting oral errors. Individual learner characteristics.
Creating a supportive learning environment. Students' conscious perception. Studies on students' and teachers' attitudes towards the correction of oral English errors. Studies in other countries.
Studies in Vietnam. Conceptual framework of the study. 39 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 43 METHODOLOGY. A brief description of Solutions coursebook.
A brief description of PET speaking test. Data collection procedure. Data analysis procedure. 62 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION DISCUSSION.
General attitudes towards errors and the correction of oral English errors. Towards types of oral English errors that need correcting. Towards when oral English errors should be corrected. Towards the correction techniques.
Towards who should correct oral English errors. Towards influential factors in correcting oral English errors. Towards effectiveness of oral English correction. General attitudes towards errors and the correction of oral English errors.
Towards types of English errors that should be corrected when students have already made themselves understood. Towards when oral English errors should be corrected. Towards students' capacity of self-correction and peer correction. Towards correction techniques used in the classroom.
Towards influential factors in correcting oral English errors. Towards effectiveness of oral English correction being done in class. Towards how the current oral English correction satisfies the students. 107 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION CONCLUSION.
Students' versus teachers' attitudes. Limitations of the study. Recommendations for further study. 132 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a Foreign Language M : Mean KET: Key English Test P: Significance (two-tailed) PET: Preliminary English Test Sig.
(2-tailed): Significance (two-tailed) viii LIST OF TABLES Table 2. Summary of sources of errors. Summary of types of errors. Summary of correction techniques.
Summary of students' background information. Summary of teachers' background information. PET speaking assessment scales. Summary of questionnaire items.
T-test on students' and teachers' attitudes towards the necessity and benefits of errors. T-test on students' and teachers' attitudes towards too much correction68 Table 4. Summary of students' and teachers' preferences for error types to be corrected. Summary of students' and teachers' attitudes towards the correction techniques.
T-test on students' and teachers' attitudes towards explicit correction. Summary of students' and teachers' attitudes towards who should do the correction. Summary of students' and teachers' attitudes towards influential factors in correcting oral English errors. Summary of oral English errors made and corrected during observations .106 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.
Conceptual framework of the study. Students' and teachers' responses to the necessity and benefits of errors. Students' and teachers' responses to the necessity of oral English error correction. Students' and teachers' responses to the bad consequences of too much correction.
Students' and teachers' responses to whether students feel embarrassed when being corrected. Students' and teachers' responses to whether students feel dissatisfied if no correction were done. Students' and teachers' mean of responses to types of errors that should be corrected. Students' and teachers' mean of responses to correction timing.
Students' and teachers' mean of responses to correction techniques. Students' and teachers' mean of responses to who should correct oral English errors. Students' and teachers' mean of responses to influential factors in correcting oral English errors. Students' and teachers' responses to students' capacity to realize and understand the corrections.
Students' and teachers' responses to error repetition. Students' and teachers' responses to speaking improvement. Students' and teachers' responses to correction effectiveness and satisfaction.89 x ABSTRACT Although much has been written about the correction of oral English errors, new findings continue to emerge as investigations into its different aspects, including those on students' and teachers' attitudes, have been carried out. Many language educators and researchers keep insisting that matching the preferences and expectations of students and teachers is significant for successful language learning, as a result, much research into the participants' attitudes has been conducted across countries.
However, there seems to be a dearth of such studies in Vietnamese context. Therefore, this study aimed to elicit PET students' and teachers' attitudes towards the correction of oral English errors in the context of ESC English language center in order to seek for the similarities and differences between them. In addition, effectiveness of the current practice was also evaluated. To this end, questionnaires were administered to 144 PET students and 11 teachers to explore their viewpoints.
Moreover, interviews and classroom observations were included to provide more in-depth information as well as real data which make room for reliable findings. It was found out that the students and their teachers shared beliefs in most of the aspects, however discrepancies and inconsistencies did reveal themselves. xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Background to the study English has gained utmost importance and plays a vital role in the life of every single person nowadays.
To be proficient in this language understandably has become the must and the thirst of many people in different parts of the world. English, therefore, has constituted an essential component of teaching curricula at any Vietnamese school from elementary to advanced level, especially at language centers whose main focus is nothing other than practicing its four skills, namely reading, writing, listening and speaking. Along the history of English teaching and learning, speaking for a long time was undervalued as language teachers devoted most of the class time to enhancing students' grammatical competence. Teaching of speaking skill then was merely repetition and memorization of English patterns and dialogues in which errors were considered a sin and thus were corrected the moment they occurred.
However, things have changed dramatically since English emerged as an international means of communication. Speaking in today's world is seen as a crucial part of English learning and teaching as the ability to successfully communicate in a variety of contexts is higher appreciated than mastery of reading or writing skills. As Abbott (1981) claimed, 'just as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the proof of language learning lies in the learner's ability to perform and communicate in the foreign language'. Such high demand of speaking mastery has resulted in a refreshing change in the way speaking is taught in classrooms.
Students are now expected to be given opportunities to freely take part in real-life communicative activities in which they can use the English at their disposal to express their opinions, to exchange information or to get their messages across without worrying too much about making errors as well as their teachers' reactions towards them (Burkart, 1998). Making errors is natural in a student' language learning, however, how to deal with them is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. While written correction causes relatively less pressure and difficulty on both teachers and students as it is often done individually through papers with a lot of time provided, oral correction, 1 most of the time done in front of the class, requires a split-second decision which must take into consideration a lot of factors. In response to those concerns, a widely accepted approach is that oral errors made during communicative activities should be tolerated as long as they do not interfere with the message (Brown, 1980; Harmer, 2001; Saville-Troike, 2006).
The goal of those activities, as explained by those researchers, lies in students' attempts to make themselves understood by using their current English proficiency to the fullest. Errors committed then are just evidence of students' exploring the new language and their effort to get their messages across. The correction of oral English errors in such circumstances hence should be selectively and constructively so as to preserve students' motivation in speaking and provide needed help for their speaking development. Oral error correction, without doubt, is an important element in English teaching and learning that makes it one of the tasks a language teacher usually performs in the classroom.
However, such practice may end in a failure, as Truscott (1999) insisted, due to a great many problems both teachers and students must overcome. According to him, correction may produce not only embarrassment and inhibition among students but also a generally negative attitudes towards the class and probably towards the language itself once teachers are unable to tailor error correction for individual students.