A Study of Students and Teachers' Preferences and Attitudes towards Correction of Classroom Written Errors in Saudi EFL Context

Abstract

It is no doubt that teacher written feedback plays an essential role in teaching writing skill. The present study, by use of questionnaire, investigates Saudi EFL students' and teachers' preferences and attitudes towards written error corrections. The study also aims at identifying the difficulties encountered by teachers and students during the feedback process. The questionnaire findings reveal that both teachers and students have positive attitudes towards written error correction. The study also shows that while teachers and students share such common preferences as the importance of error correction and the types of errors, there are considerable discrepancies as to the techniques of error correction. For instance, students favor the overall correction, whereas most teachers do not. However, the results show that students prefer teacher correction to peer and self-correction. Moreover, both the teachers and students have encountered a number of difficulties, so suggestions have been investigated so as to deal with the problems.