The Efficacy Of Teacher's Error Correction On College Students' Foreign Language Writing

In the recent half century, the language researchers and teachers have conducted a series of comprehensive research which covers the necessity of doing error correction, the best time to give error correction, the types of errors to be corrected, the methods employed in error correction, the subjects to give error correction (Chandler 2000; Fathan & Whalley 1990; Ferris 1999b; Frantzen 1995; Kepner 1999; Lalande 1982; Lizotte 2001; Polio 1998; Robb et al 1986; Semke 1984; Sheppard 1992). However, owing to the differences existing in research subjects, methods, purposes, experimental processes, the analysis of the results, the research findings in these studies are not conclusive, and can not be applied to specific writing teaching practice. In contrast, as to the current Chinese college English writing instruction, it is commonly accepted that error correction is a time-consuming yet ineffective task for the teacher. The students, on one hand, admit they need error correction to their compositions; on the other hand, repeat the same kind of errors in nearly every composition.For the consideration of the above two aspects, this paper conducted a 12-week semester's experimental study with two intact classes of non-English sophomores coming from China University of Geosciences. The subjects assigned to experimental group had received error correction treatment for every essay they made, and had asked to correct their errors in a ten-minute session of class time when the essay was handed out from the teacher. While for the control group, no error correction was offered. The purpose of this study was, first, to compare with the findings of the current studies which are mostly conducted either on native speakers or on learners who take English as their second language, so that any difference is to be found; and then to reveal the efficacy of error correction treatment on Chinese foreign language learners and the practice of this method. From the data collected from students'first and last composition, this study made its emphasis on observing students'self-editing ability, writing fluency, accuracy and proficiency. With a reference to the validity of measures about second language development in the book Second Language Development in Writing: Measures of fluency, accuracy & complexity (1998:29) written by Kate Wolfe-Quintero, Hae-Young Kim, and Shunji Inagake, the self-editing ability is measured by the percentage of errors rightly-corrected out of the total errors made in each composition, fluency by words per clause, accuracy by errors per clause. While the overall writing proficiency is rated by three independent raters according to the criteria used in scoring CET4 compositions.Through comparative research with the control group, this study found that before treatment, no significant difference was found between experimental and control group in writing accuracy, fluency and proficiency. The subjects in control group even had a better self-editing ability. But, after 12 weeks of treatment, the experimental group outperformed control group in not only self-editing ability, but also writing accuracy and proficiency. Although two groups revealed no statistical difference in writing fluency, both groups improved in fluency after one semester.Based on the findings of this study, this paper furthered the study in analyzing its implications in theory and pedagogy. In the end, the limitations of the study and the future research suggestions are offered.