A Study On Student's Oral Errors And Error-correction In Junior Middle School English Class

Error correction and its importance in the foreign language classroom have received considerable attention during the past decades.According to Contrastive Analysis,Error Analysis and the differences between first and second language acquisition,correcting learners' errors is substantial in three different ways.For students,they can learn from error-corrections and improve their learning efficiency.For teachers,learner's errors tell them about learner's progress and what parts of the syllabus need further attention.They can reteach the knowledge through error-corrections.For foreign language teaching,learner's errors are helpful for educators to know learner's learning styles,and errors can provide information for designing syllabus.Error-correction can create interactions between teachers and students.The author researched the actual situation of error-correction in junior middle school English class.The present thesis tries to help EFL teachers and educators become familiar with high-frequency errors and error-corrections so as to raise their awareness of error-correction.The research involves participants of 200 students and 10 teachers in Xi'an Gaoxin No.1 Middle School.According to the current situation of error-related researches,the author put forward three research questions as follows: 1)What major errors do junior middle school students frequently make in spoken English? 2)What error-correction strategies do junior middle school English teachers usually use in class? 3)What are the teachers and students' attitudes toward errors and error-correction?In order to know the answers of these three research questions,the author conducts the study with three instruments: classroom observation,questionnaires and interviews with both teachers and students.Through the data analysis of this research,the author comes up with some major findings as follows: 1)Phonological errors and grammatical errors are students' high-frequency errors in their spoken English.2)Teacher usually use explicit correction and elicitation to correct errors in class.3)For errors and error-correction,most of teachers and students hold positive attitudes.They think making errors is unavoidable in language learning,and appropriate error-correction can be positive and effective for language teaching and learning.To improve effectiveness of error-correction in junior middle school English class,the author proposes three suggestions for teaching in the light of the research: 1)Teachers should improve their abilities of spoken English and set good examples for students.2)Teachers should enrich their theoretical knowledge of error-correction and combine theory with actual classroom teaching.3)To strengthen interaction and communication between teachers and students,teachers can design some activities.The aim of major findings and suggestions lies in providing reliable and scientific references for junior middle school English teachers,so as to promote the teaching efficiency in the English teaching in junior middle school.