1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ----- o0o ----- PHẠM THỊ VIỆT DUNG TEACHERS' CORRECTIONOFWRITTENERRORS ANDSTUDENTS' UPTAKE ( Cách chữa lỗi viết của giáo viên và sự tiếp nhận của học sinh ) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 HA NOI, AUGUST 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 2 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ----- o0o ----- PHẠM THỊ VIỆT DUNG TEACHERS' CORRECTIONOFWRITTENERRORS ANDSTUDENTS' UPTAKE ( Cách chữa lỗi viết của giáo viên và sự tiếp nhận của học sinh ) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 SUPERVISOR: CAO THỊ PHƯƠNG HA NOI, AUGUST 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Table of contents iv List of abbreviation vii Part 1: Introduction 1. Aims of the study 1 3. Scopes of the study 2 4. Method of the study 2 5.
Design of the study 2 Part 2: Content Chapter 1: Literature Review 1. Errors in language learning process 1. Definition of errors 3 1. Errors and mistakes 3 1.
Error Analysis in second language acquisition. Second Language Acquisition Perspectives on Error Correction in Second Language Learning 1. Definition of feedback 6 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Second Language Acquisition Perspectives on Error Correction in Second 7 Language Learning 1.
Written Error Correction Strategies 8 1. Direct corrective feedback 9 1. Indirect corrective feedback 10 1. Metalinguistic corrective feedback 11 1.
Focus of the feedback 12 1. Effectiveness of corrective feedback strategies 12 1. Error Correction and Learners‘ Uptake 13 Chapter 2: The Study 2. The setting of the study 15 2.
Techniques of analysis 18 2. Presentation of results 19 2. Discussion of results 21 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Learner Responses to Feedback: Uptake and Repair 30 Chapter 3: Implications and Suggestions for written error correction 3.
Suggestions for written error corrections 35 Part 3: Conclusion 3. Limitations and suggestions for further research 40 References 41 Appendices I TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 9 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 1.G AGREEMENT BETWEEN SUBJECT AND VERB 3. CA CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS 4. CF CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK 5.
EA ERROR ANALYSIS 6. ESL ENGLISH SECOND LANGUAGE 7. PS PAST SIMPLE TENSE 11. SVA SUBJECT VERB AGREEMENT 12.
WF WORD FORM 13. WO WORD ORDER TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 10 PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale English serves as a major language for international communication and people all over the world are making increasing use of English as their ―second language‖. Writing is one of four skills in language learning process and it is seen as a language skill which is the most difficult and complex because it‘s required widely perception and needs good understanding on grammar and structures.
It is a task that no two people do the same way. However, there are some logical steps that every writer seems to follow in the creation of a paper. In writing process that need grammatical and spelling understanding well to make the composition well and can be understood. English is very complicated for Vietnamese learners, as English and Vietnamese are of two different linguistic types.
Besides, there are quite a lot of differences in the way of thinking, lifestyle, and literature between the two cultures. These contrasts themselves have caused Vietnamese learners to meet some difficulties and commit errors while learning English. Most teachers hope their feedback will not only improve their students‘ current writing, but also help their writing and language development. How to deal with and when to give feed back to the errors are vital in teaching English as it may either result in motivation or discouragement in language learning.
There have been a number of B.A thesis making error analysis by Vietnamese ELT methodologists and applied linguists, such as Nguyen Van Loi (1999), Do Hong Yen (2002), Tran Thi Hai Binh (2005), etc, but none of them mentioned the responding of students to their teachers‘ correction. It is hoped that the findings of this thesis in the area of writing and the influence of teachers‘ correction as well as students‘ uptake would be relevant to teachers as well as students at school. Aims of the study This study investigates the effect of teacher corrective feedback and is aimed at making an analysis of the errors made by students of English in learning writing skill. Basing on the results of the above error analysis, the researcher finally hopes: - giving a better awareness of pupils‘ errors in written English TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 11 - helping teachers have positive attitudes towards students‘ written errors - to find out solutions to the problems in the students‘ learning process as well as the teachers‘ teaching process so that students‘ errors in writing can be avoided.
Scopes of the study Due to the limited time, this research confines itself to errors in written language, which are collected from written tasks performed by second language high school students. Method of the study: This is a quantitative research using compositions as a technique of eliciting data for the analysis and statistical counting as measurement of results. Design of the study: For achieving the aims stated above, the research starts with an introduction giving an overview of what is researched, why and how it can be done. Followed are three chapters presenting the main part of the research.
In chapter one, literature related to the study is reviewed. It is divided into 5 main sections. Section 1 introduces some Errors in language learning process. The notion of errors is discussed in the opinions of Corder, Duskova, and Richards.
Section 2 summarizes Second Language Acquisition Perspectives on Error Correction in Second Language Learning. In section 3, the researcher provides some Written Error Correction Strategies, which are suggested by the former. Section 4 and section 5 mention the effectiveness of corrective feedback strategies and how learners uptake. Chapter two is composed of two parts: research design and discussion of results.
In the first part, the research method is clearly described with specific procedures in collecting and analyzing data. The statistical results are shown up to determine the most effective corrective feedback among those applied in the research. Chapter 3 is finished with some implication and suggestions to elimination and prevention of errors. Finally, the study closes with a conclusion, which gives a summary of the whole study problem, and provides suggestions for further study.
TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 12 PART II: CONTENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Errors in language learning process 1. Definition of errors According to Corder (1975:112), an error is referred to as a linguistic form which is either superficially deviant or inappropriate in terms of the target language. Besides, James (1998: 1) provisionally defines a language error as an unsuccessful bit of language.
In an article about some problems of definition, identification, and distinction, Lennon (1991: 181), from the university of Kassel, suggested that notwithstanding native speaker intuitions, errors do not constitute as easily recognizable a feature in production as might be imagined. It can be therefore, said that it is not easy to define what can be considered to be errors in terms of linguistics. In order to limit the scope of the research and to have a clear, consistent set of corpus as the subject of the research, the researcher would like to propose this working definition: The language usages which are, to some extent, contrary to the general rules or styles in English, or any deviated forms or structures that cannot account for the English model of usage assumed by educated users are considered erroneous, ungrammatically or unacceptable, thus being regarded as errors. Errors and mistakes A distinction is sometimes made between an error, which results from incomplete knowledge, and a mistake made by a learner when writing or speaking and which is caused by lack of attention, fatigue, carelessness, or some other aspects of performance.
Mistakes are of no significance to the process of language learning. However, the problem of determining what is a learner‘s mistake and what a learner‘s error is one of some difficulty and involves a much more sophisticated study and analysis of errors than is usually accorded them. Corder (1967: 59) made a distinction between a mistake and an error. Whereas a mistake is a random performance slip caused by fatigue, excitement, etc, and therefore can be TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 13 readily self-corrected, an error is a systematic deviation made by learners who have not yet mastered the rules of the second language.
A learner cannot self-correct an error because it is a reflective product of his or her current stage of second language development or underlying competence. In other words, he associates errors with failures in competence and mistakes with failures in performance. Error Analysis in second language acquisition. Errors are now viewed as natural and important part of learning process because they can yield information about language.
This positive attitude towards errors is especially important in the wake of the Communicative Language Learning and Teaching. Many researchers on errors in second language learning have been done by several scholars like Corder (1967), Richard (1992), and Spelunker (1992). Error Analysis is the study and analysis of the errors made by second and foreign language learners. Error Analysis may be carried out in order to: - identify strategies which learners use in language learning - identify the causes of learners‘ errors - obtain information on common difficulties in language learning, as an aid to teaching or in the preparation of teaching materials.
Error Analysis developed as a branch of applied linguistics in the 1960s, and set out to demonstrate that many learners‘ errors were not due to the learners‘ mother tongue but reflected universal learning strategies. Error Analysis was therefore offered as an alternative to contrastive analysis. Attempts were made to develop classifications for different types of errors on the basis of the different processes that were assumed to account for them. A basis distinction was drawn between intralingual and Interlingual errors.
An Intralingual error is one which results from faulty or partial learning of the Target language, rather than from language transfer. Intralingual error may be caused by the influence of one target language item upon another. For example, a learner may produce He is comes, based on a blend of the English structures He is coming, He comes. Intralingual errors can be classified as follows: TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 14 - overgeneralization - developmental - induced errors - errors of avoidance - errors of overproduction - simplifications - communication-based errors An Interlingual error is an error which results from language transfer, which is caused by the learner‘s native language transference ( also called negative transfer).
For example, Vietnamese learners of English may produce such errors: (*) He was died last year. ( interference from mother tongue “bị”) (**) I prefer this book than that one ( interference from mother tongue “hơn”) Corder (1974) elaborated the procedure for Error Analysis, distinguishing five stages, as follows: - selection of a corpus of language - identification of errors in the corpus - classification of the errors identified - explanation of the psycholinguistic causes of the errors - evaluation or error gravity ranking of the errors Choon (1993) gives some suggestions on carrying out an error analysis research. According to her, one has to identify the errors first, then the errors are classified according to categories such as : semantic errors ( wrong words, wrong forms, etc.), grammatical errors ( tense, prepositions, etc.), global errors and local errors. She suggested that ― the system of classifying errors should be flexible‖ ( Choon, 1993:2).
The last step is determining how much they deviate from the target language norm, to what extent they affect communication.