Teachers' correction of written errors and students' uptake = Cách chữa lỗi viết của giáo viên và sự tiếp nhận của học sinh

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 giáo viên tiếp nhận học sinh ) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 HA NOI, AUGUST 2010 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 giáo viên tiếp nhận học sinh ) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 SUPERVISOR: CAO THỊ PHƯƠNG HA NOI, AUGUST 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Table of contents iv List of abbreviation vii Part 1: Introduction Rationale Aims of the study Scopes of the study Method of the study Design of the study Part 2: Content Chapter 1: Literature Review 1.1 Errors in language learning process 1.1.1 Definition of errors 1.1.2 Errors and mistakes 1.1.3 Error Analysis in second language acquisition 1.2 Second Language Acquisition Perspectives on Error Correction in Second Language Learning 1.2.1 Definition of feedback 1.2.2 Second Language Acquisition Perspectives on Error Correction in Second Language Learning 1.3 Written Error Correction Strategies 1.3.1 Direct corrective feedback 1.3.2 Indirect corrective feedback 10 1.3.3 Metalinguistic corrective feedback 11 1.3.4 Focus of the feedback 12 1.3.5 Reformulation 12 1.4 Effectiveness of corrective feedback strategies 12 1.5 Error Correction and Learners‘ Uptake 13 Chapter 2: The Study 2.1 Research questions 15 2.2 The setting of the study 15 2.3 Informants 15 2.4 Instrumentation 16 2.5 Procedures 2.5.1 Data collection 16 2.5.1.1 Task 1: (Direct corrective feedback applied) 17 2.5.1.2 Task 2: (Indirect corrective feedback applied) 17 2.5.1.3 Task 3: (Metalinguistic corrective feedback applied) 18 2.5.2 Techniques of analysis 18 2.5.3 Presentation of results 19 2.6 Discussion of results 21 2.7 Data analysis 25 2.8 Learner Responses to Feedback: Uptake and Repair 30 Chapter 3: Implications and Suggestions for written error correction 3.1 General Implications 34 3.2 Suggestions for written error corrections 35 Part 3: Conclusion 3.1 Conclusion 39 3.2 Limitations and suggestions for further research 40 References 41 Appendices I LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ART ARTICLE A.G AGREEMENT BETWEEN SUBJECT AND VERB CA CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS CF CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK EA ERROR ANALYSIS ESL ENGLISH SECOND LANGUAGE L1 FIRST LANGUAGE L2 SECOND LANGUAGE PREP PREPOSITION 10 PS PAST SIMPLE TENSE 11 SVA SUBJECT VERB AGREEMENT 12 WF WORD FORM 13 WO WORD ORDER 10 PART I: INTRODUCTION 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 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, M.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 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 main sections Section introduces some Errors in language learning process The notion of errors is discussed in the opinions of Corder, Duskova, and Richards Section 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 and section 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 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 12 PART II: CONTENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Errors in language learning process 1.1.1 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 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 1.1.2 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 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 1.1.3 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: ... OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES - o0o - PHẠM THỊ VIỆT DUNG TEACHERS'' CORRECTIONOFWRITTENERRORS ANDSTUDENTS'' UPTAKE ( Cách chữa lỗi viết giáo viên tiếp. .. 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... importance of error correction and the amount of emphasis both teachers and students place on it, it is reasonable to ask whether grammatical correction is effective and appropriate at all, and if