Investigation And Research On Oral Error Correction In Junior English Class

In the middle stage of last century,scholars were interested in learners' errors,and error analysis began to develop.From then on,Scholars and teachers have gradually gained a new understanding of errors and began to realize the role of errors in learners' second language learning.Errors are unavoidable in the process of second language learning,which reflect learners' assumptions about the target language,promoting learners' second language learning.Although errors are beneficial to learners' second language development,most scholars believe that errors which occur in learners' learning process should be corrected,which is conducive to learners' language development.As we all know,most junior high school students learn English mainly through classroom teaching due to the lack of a real and natural foreign language environment in China.Therefore,How teachers deal with students' errors in the classroom is very important for junior high school learners to learn English.This study focuses on the following questions:(1)What are junior high school students' expectations for oral error correction in English classroom?(2)What are the corrective actions of teachers in the classroom?(3)Are there any differences between students' expectations of correcting errors and teachers' correcting behaviors? If so,what are the specific aspects and effects?This study investigates the oral error correction in a middle school in Wanzhou District by means of questionnaires,semi-structured interviews and classroom observation.The results show that there are some similarities and differences among students' expectations,teachers' opinions and teachers' classroom behaviors.The similarities are as follows: firstly,students and teachers agree that error correction is necessary,and it doesn't frustrate learners' enthusiasm.They believe that error correction is conducive to the development of students' language ability.Secondly,both sides generally believe that grammatical errors should be corrected in the classroom.The main reason is that grammar plays an important role in examination and it is the foundation to learn English.The differences are as follows: firstly,the timing of error correction.Both teachers and students prefer to correct students' mistakes after the students finish expressing.However,the teachers' actual classroom behavior is not the same.Teachers usually correct students' mistakes as soon as the students have made mistakes.Secondly,the way to correct errors.According to interviews and questionnaires,both students and teachers prefer negotiate form,but in classroom activities,teachers often adopt recasting and explicit error correction.Teachers' ideas and students' expectations are basically the same,but there is a big gap between teachers' actual behavior in classroom and students' expectations.The first reason that teacher are short of theoretical knowledge and profound understanding of error correction.The second reason is that teachers pay more attention on knowledge than communication in English classroom.The third reason is that teaching task is heavy and time is pressing.To sum up,the following suggestions are put forward: Firstly,Education Department and school authorities should organize and carry out relevant training and research activities about error correction theory to help teachers update and internalize the relevant theoretical knowledge of error correction,in order to improve teachers' theoretical level and practical ability of error correction.Secondly,advocate quality education and optimize the teachers' and students' evaluation criteria,so that can make the evaluation methods of teachers and students more diverse.Thirdly,enrich classroom activities and explore various error correction modes.Fourthly,pay attention to students' emotional factors and needs to raise error correction rate and learning efficiency.