An Investigation Into Students' Preference For Error Correction In English Class In Rural Senior High School

During the process of second language learning,it is common for learners to commit language errors.Teachers' error correction has a profound influence on the input and output of students' language,which is also an effective interaction tool between teachers and students.Students' preference for error correction plays a significant role in students' language learning and the improvement of teaching effect.Besides,studying students' preference for error correction also reflects the student-centered requirements.What's more,most of the current researches focus on the teachers' error correction and the effectiveness of corrective feedback.Therefore,it is worthwhile to study students' preference for error correction in English class.Based on the statement above,the author tries to discover students' preference for error correction in English class using the questionnaire and interview.This paper aims to discover different level students' attitudes towards whether the errors should be corrected and their preference for the correction type,correction time,correction subject and correction way.The research questions of this paper are as followings:(1)What is rural senior high school students' attitudes towards error correction in English class?(2)What is students' preference for error correction? The subjects of this paper are the Senior Two students in Hongtong No.3high school.Having asked the English teachers in the school about the students' level and investigated the students' English scores,the author takes the average score 90 of last final exam and this midterm exam as a standard.The total score of the exam is 150.So in this paper,the high level students refer to the students whose score is equal or above 90 while the low level students refer to the students whose score is below 90.Through analyzing the data of the questionnaires and the recorded interview materials,this research has following major findings: Regarding whether the errors should be corrected,both the high level students and low level students believe that the errors should be corrected.They also think that error correction are beneficial to their English learning and can help them avoid committing the same errors to some degree.Most high level students think that error correction will not affect their enthusiasm for English learning,but there are some low level students believe that their enthusiasm can be affected.Therefore,teachers should pay moreattention to low level students' strong self-esteem.About the correction type,the high level students prefer their grammatical errors to be corrected more and lexical errors to be corrected less while the low level students want all their errors to be corrected except phonetic errors.Regarding the time of error correction,most high level students and low level students prefer to be corrected after their speech.Besides,some low level students want their grammatical errors to be corrected after class.When it comes to the subject of error correction,the high level students want their errors to be corrected by themselves under the teacher's guidance while the low level students like teacher correction.About the correction way,the high level students prefer the form negotiation way while the low level students like the explicit correction way best.In summary,English teachers should treat different level students' errors appropriately.Teachers should have an accurate understanding of students' errors,choose the appropriate time and use the suitable way to correct errors.In addition,the teachers also need to give students opportunities to correct their errors by themselves.What's more,teachers should protect students' self-esteem especially the low level students.Finally,teachers should combine the theory and practice to improve the effectiveness of error correction.