Attitudes Towards Error Correction

Introduction
The present study focuses on the way in which error correction is done and the significance of errors in the Romanian context. In designing it, I did not use my knowledge on causes of errors as I was not interested to find out whether it can be established a correlation between students’ mother tongue, the target language and the production of errors. I oriented this study towards a narrower issue: the attitudes of teachers, students and native speakers of Romanian towards error correction. In order to do this, I used the following classification of correction techniques: self – correction, peer correction and teacher correction. My research instrument for finding out teachers’ and learners’ attitudes towards error correction was the questionnaire. In constructing my questionnaires my sources were David Nunan’s books entitled ‘Language Teaching Methodology. A Textbook for Teachers’ (1991) and ‘Research Methods in Language Learning’ (1995).The questionnaire is a research instrument which involves asking questions of other people and it is classified as ‘introspective’, since it involves respondents reporting on themselves, their views, their beliefs and so on. According to Nunan (1995:115) ‘introspection is the process of observing and reflecting on one’s thoughts, feelings, motives, reasoning processes, and mental states with a view to determining the ways in which these processes and states determine our behaviour’.Very often the questionnaire is answered by reading the questions and then ticking responses, or by writing in short answers. Thus, it is easier for the researcher to deal with the data collected and this is one of the reasons I chose it.
The Theory of Questionnaire Design and Analysis
Questionnaire preparation
• Purpose
The first thing to be very clear about was the purpose, that is, I had to know exactly the reason why I was setting up the questionnaire and what I wanted to find out. I tried to imagine the range of responses in order to know whether they would tell me what I needed to know.
• Handling the data
Again, it was important to imagine the completed responses. They needed to be in a form that was simple and convenient to analyse. This meant organising the questionnaire form so that it would be easy for me to record and discuss the results.
• Practical details
I needed to know how many copies of the questionnaire I would need and how I was going to ensure the maximum return completed questionnaires.
• Anonymity
I established whether the questionnaires were going to be anonymous. In case of anonymity, people might be more honest and informative in their responses. In case of non-anonymity, I might have been able to have follow-up interviews on selected questionnaires. I might also have been able to send reminders to those who had not responded.
Questionnaire Design
• Clarity
It had to clear the informants why they were filling in the questionnaire: what was intended to achieve. It had to be clear whether or not the questionnaire was supposed to be anonymous. The instructions had to be very clear and explicit. The informants had to know whether the answers were to be ticked, crossed, circled or written out and where.
• Simplicity
I needed to know whether the questionnaire was laid out in a straightforward manner and whether the layout helped respondents to find their way through it.
• Types of questions
Questionnaire items can be relatively closed or open ended. A closed item is one in which the range of possible responses is determined by the researcher. In contrast, an open item is one in which the subject can decide what to say and how to say it. Questionnaires can consist entirely of closed questions, entirely of open questions, or a mixture of closed and open questions.
The advantage of closed questions is that they usually make the questionnaire easier and quicker to fill in. they also make for quicker and more reliable scoring of the responses. The disadvantages of the closed questions are that they usually take longer to devise than open questions. Instructions on how to answer them have to be very clear. This means that the questionnaire designer has to anticipate all or most of the possible answers, so there may be little unexpected information in the responses.
One corresponding advantage of open questions is that they are comparatively easy to design, but one may have some difficulties in trying to score and analyse the responses. It is also likely that responses to open questions reflect what the respondent wants to say.
• Relevance
Probably the most frequent mistake in designing questionnaires is asking unnecessary or irrelevant questions: for example, wanting to know whether the respondent is male or female, when his information has nothing to do with the purpose of questionnaire.
• User – friendliness
A lot of what I have been saying can be summarised by making the point that, since no one enjoys answering questionnaires, they should be made as ‘user - friendly’ as possible. This means they should not be too long, they should not be intensive (e.g. by asking questions that may embarrass the respondents) and they should not be confusing or perplexing.
Piloting the Questionnaire
An issue that affects questionnaires is that they should be piloted to see whether they work as planned. Even if I was going to distribute only a small number of questionnaires, I had to try them out on one or two people beforehand.
In the piloting stage, I inquired:
• whether the instructions were clear and easy to follow;
• whether the questions were clear;
• whether the respondents were able to answer all the questions;
• whether the respondents found any of the questions irrelevant, patronising or irritating;
• how long the questionnaire took the respondents to complete;
• whether the respondents had any comments or suggestions that would help to make my questionnaire more effective.
I piloted my questionnaires on two students. Drawing on the lessons learnt from the pilot I made the following changes:
• I gave clear written instructions;
• I eliminated questions five and six as they weren’t very clear and their answers were included in the variants of question seven
• I changed the third variant from question three. Instead ‘uncomfortable’ I used the term ‘embarrassed’ as I thought that when producing an error students might show a sensation of embarrassment. This may be the result of teacher’s and even their classmates’ presence, more than a sensation of discomfort, which cannot be clearly defined.
The questions that were unclear were given clear instructions about how to answer them. I tried to make my questionnaire user-friendly by changing the introduction. The questionnaire for learners was given in Romanian, as my subjects were beginners.
As I was interested in teachers’ opinions I constructed a separate questionnaire. I piloted it on one teacher. After the piloting stage I made the following changes: I made my questionnaire user friendly by changing the introduction and I gave clear instructions about how to answer the questions.
In addition I made a questionnaire for native speakers of Romanian as I thought that by administering it I might get useful and interesting opinions that could help me draw some conclusions concerning error correction in general and not necessary in the context of teaching / learning English.
The purpose of questions
Questionnaire for learners of English
Question 1: to see how they find out learning English.
Question 2: to find out what importance students give to error correction
Question 3: to see how they feel when committing an error
Question 4: to see whether they learn from their errors
Question 5: to see what correction techniques students usually prefer
Question 6: to find out which correction techniques students find more useful
Question 7: to see whether they are interested in the errors committed
Question 8: to find out what colour students prefer the teacher to use when providing correction
Questionnaire for teachers of English
Question 1: to know what is the respondents’ experience in teaching English
Question 2: to see how they found teaching English
Question 3: to find out what colour teachers use when providing correction
Question 4: to find out the way in which correction is carried out
Question 5: to find out the way in which they correct errors
Question 6: to know what correction techniques teachers use in classroom
Question 7: to find out which of the correction techniques teachers find to be more useful
Question 8: to see whether they are aware of students’ feelings concerning correction
Question 9: to know what they think to be the results of correction
Questionnaire for native speakers of Romanian
Question 1: to find out the respondents’ age
Question 2: to know how they find learning a foreign language
Question 3: to see what importance they give to correction
Question 4: to see their attitudes when committing errors
Question 5: to see whether or not they learn out of correction
Question69: to find out what correction technique they prefer
Question 7: to see what correction techniques have a greater utility
Data Analysis
I have administered the questionnaires to 10 students (beginners, studying English as a foreign language), 10 teachers of English and 10 native speakers of Romanian. When selecting the teachers I thought of getting answers from different ones, that is from middle school teachers, high school teachers and even university teachers. I also chose teachers being in their first years of teaching and experienced ones. The native speakers of Romanian were selected on the following criteria: they had nothing in common with the context of teaching / learning and they did not learn any foreign language except for the period when they were students, but they do not use it anymore.
Quantitative Data Analysis
The questionnaire for learners of English
Q1. Nine students consider English as being easy to be learnt and one student considers it difficult to learn.
Q2. All the students say that it is very important ‘being corrected’
Q3. Seven students feel encouraged when their attention is drawn to errors committed, while three students feel discouraged about this.
Q4. All the students argue that they learn from their errors.
Q5. Seven students say that they prefer to be corrected only by the teacher, while three prefer to correct themselves after the teacher has indicated the errors.
Q6. All the students consider that they learn more from the correction provided by the teacher.
Q7. All the students say that when they get back their papers with correction provided by the teacher, they look at them in order to avoid the errors committed.
Q8. All the students say that they prefer their teacher to use a red pencil when correcting their work.
The questionnaire for teachers of English
Q1. Five respondents have been teaching English between 0-3 years, four between 4-6 years and one for more than 10 years.
Q2. Seven teachers find teaching English to be difficult, while three find it easy.
Q3. Eight teachers say that they use red colour when correcting students’ work and one teacher says that he / she uses a pencil when doing this. Teacher 4 says that he / she uses both red and blue.
Q4. Five teachers write in the correct form when correcting errors, four give hint what it should be and two simply indicate something was wrong.
Q5. Four teachers write in the correct form when correcting errors, four give hint what it should be and two simply indicate something was wrong.
Q6. Three teachers say that they use only teacher correction in classroom, while two say they use peer correction. Five teachers use more than a correction technique. Here are their answers:
Teacher 1 uses both self-correction and peer correction.
Teacher 4 uses peer correction and teacher correction.
Teacher 5 uses self-correction and teacher correction.
Teachers 6 and 7 use all the techniques.
Q7. Six teachers consider that self-correction helps students improve their knowledge, one teacher considers that it is peer correction that helps students and one teacher considers that teacher correction helps students more than the other two correction techniques. Teacher 6 considers that all types of correction techniques help students, while Teacher 7 considers that only self-correction and teacher correction is useful.
Q8. Four teachers say that the students feel discouraged when given back a paper full of corrected errors, four say that students feel embarrassed, while two say that students feel encouraged.
Q9. Eight teachers think that students learn from the corrections they provide for a written paper, while two teachers think that students don’t learn from this.
The questionnaire for native speakers of Romanian
Q1. The respondents are between 22 and 57 years old.
Q2. Six of them find easy to learn a foreign language, while four find it difficult.
Q3. Nine respondents consider correction as being very important, while one respondent ranks it as important.
Q4. Nine respondents say that they feel embarrassed when their attention is drawn to errors committed while one respondent feels encouraged about that.
Q5. All the respondents say that they learn from the errors they usually commit.
Q6. Five respondents express their preference for self-correction, while five prefer to be corrected by other people.
Q7. Five respondents argue that they learn more from self-correction and five say they learn more from the correction provided to them by other people.
Qualitative Data Analysis
The learners of English and the native speakers of Romanian consider learning a foreign language, English in this case, to be easy. Conversely, the teachers consider teaching English to be a difficult task. All the respondents consider being very important to be corrected when committing an error. That is why they argue that they usually learn from the errors committed in order to avoid them.
Both learners and teachers of English showed their preference for teacher correction in the classroom. However, few students prefer self-correction, but only after the errors have been indicated to them by the teacher. I consider that to be a different way of teacher correction, a more blurred one. What I mean is that teachers should give learners a free hand in correcting errors, but also in getting them used to the identification of errors. I think this is one of the reasons why students, although some of them prefer self-correction to be used, argue that they learn more from the corrections provided by the teachers. They are not accustomed yet to freely express their opinions and I would argue that this might be owing to the tradition of learning in Romania.
However, teachers argue that students learn more from self-correction. Taking into account the ideas provided by Julian Edge (1993:10) regarding self-correction: ‘People usually prefer to put their errors right than be corrected by someone else. Also, self-correction is easier to remember, because someone has put something right in his or her own head’, one may say that teachers are absolutely right when maintaining this point of view. But how can students learn more from self-correction if the majority of teachers argue that they usually prefer teacher correction as a technique? However, there are some teachers who use self-correction in classroom, while some use peer correction. Of course, when using peer correction one must keep in mind the disadvantages of this technique.
Regarding the way in which teachers correct learners’ written work it was surprising to find out that some, not too many anyway, do not correct any of the errors committed, but simply indicate, probably by means of symbols or underlining, that something was wrong. They use red for correcting errors and this is in agreement with learners’ expectations about this matter. The utilization of a different colour, when correcting errors, that is red, may be explained as a way of making students be more aware of the errors they commit.
As a conclusion of the matter of correction techniques, I consider that all of them (i.e. self-correction, peer correction and teacher correction) should be used in classrooms, either when correcting written work or speaking. That is why some of the teachers who were administered the questionnaire chose more than one answer to the question dealing with this issue, being aware of certain advantages, and even disadvantages which, of course when noticed, should be avoided while using one or another correction technique.
The following table summarises the respondents’ attitudes towards the correction techniques and their usefulness.

No. ISSUE RESPONDENTS OPINIONS
1. CORRECTION TECHNIQUES TEACHERS OF English • teacher correction
• peer correction LEARNERS of English • teacher correction
• self-correction NATIVE SPEAKERS of Romanian • self-correction
• other persons’ correction
2. USEFULNESS OF CORRECTION TECHNIQUES TEACHERS OF English • self-correction LEARNERS of English • teacher correction NATIVE SPEAKERS of Romanian • self-correction
• other persons’ correction
Conclusion
Most people agree that making errors is a part of learning. Most people also agree that correction is a part of teaching. Students depend on a teacher to help them with both these needs, as the teacher decides lesson after lesson, minute after minute:
• whether to correct;
• when to correct;
• what to correct;
• how to correct.
The overall conclusion of my research is that teachers should help students to see their English as something that is developing and getting more and more useful; to make clear to them that when they don’t correct something, this doesn’t necessarily mean that it is absolutely Standard English. It means that they should feel confident that they are making the right sort of progress. I strongly agree with the supporters of the idea that teachers must try to make correction a part of the teaching and learning process, not something for learning to fight against.