A study on treatment of oral errors in ELT classes

Abstract

The present study aimed to explore EEL teachers' oral error treatment moves in ELT speaking classes, to probe into EFL teachers' and learners' perspectives on treatment of oral errors and to compare teacher and learner perspectives on the given issue. In order to achieve this purpose, various data collection instruments were used. Observation, as being one of the leading data collection instruments in the study, was employed to investigate the question of what EFL teachers' oral error treatment moves were. Questionnaires and interviews helped to reach the teachers' and the students' perspectives on treatment of oral errors. The data obtained through a variety of data collection instruments was elicited from 86 EFL students and 2 EFL speaking teachers at the ELT department in Education Faculty, Uludağ University, Bursa, Turkey. The detailed analysis of the data revealed some intriguing results. According to what the questionnaire and interview data indicated, the students had strong preferences when their oral errors were concerned. The students reported that they did not want their teachers to ignore their errors and that they found error treatment useful and necessary to learn a foreign language better. Also, they expressed strong preferences for delayed error treatment, teacher and self-treatment. On the other hand, what the observation data revealed was that the teachers had some salient practices when it came to treatment of their students' oral error errors: They tended to ignore or accept their students' erroneous utterances. Furthermore, the teachers seemed to have some grounded opinions about error treatment. They believed that error treatment was one of the important aspects of classroom practices and they viewed error treatment as an awareness and attention-raising tool towards the errors. The present study also provided strong evidence on an important issue: In spite of commonalties between the teachers' and the students' preferences when it came to treatment of oral errors, there seemed to 1G TOKEKO?RETIM KURI/LUbe mismatches regarding the questions whether to ignore oral errors, whether to provide opportunities for peer treatment and whether to interrupt for the sake of error treatment. In the light of all these results, it was concluded that the teachers needed to negotiate their classrooom practices and teaching perspectives with their students by penetrating through their students' learning and teaching perspectives and to attempt to incorporate these perspectives into their universe of teaching practices.