Iranian EFL learners' preferences toward classroom oral error correction: With a main focus on their proficiency level

Abstract

There are many problems associated with oral error correction in the EFL classrooms. One of these common problems is the student and teacher disagreement on the amount of error correction, type, and tech-niques of correcting errors. This study based on the findings of a questionnaire administrated to 90 female EFL students in Pardisan Language Institute investigates: 1) Whether or not learners' (with different profi-ciency levels) prefer classroom oral error correction; 2) learners' prefer which types of oral error correction; and 3) Which techniques of correcting oral errors do the learners prefer. The findings of this study manifest that the majority of the students in three different levels (elementary, intermediate, and advanced) had strong-ly preferred that their oral errors should be corrected and they preferred to receive constant error correction. Also the majority of the students preferred vocabulary error correction over the other types of errors. Also the least favored oral error correction technique was the technique in which the teacher ignores the students' er-rors as for as the most favored techniques by students of three different levels were the ones in which teacher repeats the original question, asks students to repeat the utterance, explain why the response is incorrect, and finally the teacher gives students a hint which might enable them to notice the error and self-correct. © 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.