شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

This case study investigated a sample of Arab male students’ preferences for oral error correction while they studied in an advanced ESL program at a Midwestern university. Twenty students and ten teachers were purposively selected to take part in this study. The major goal of the study was to identify students’ preferences regarding error types and corrective feedback strategies. The study used information gathered by means of qualitative research methods utilizing interviews, observations and the use of a focus group interview for students. The findings show that both students and teachers have positive attitudes towards error correction indicating that corrective feedback can have a positive influence on L2 learning. Most of the students reported that errors relating to grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary should receive more attention than any other error types. As for errors which relate to discourse organization, social interaction, pragmatics and communication, some students believe that they are less important than grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary. In contrast, the results of teachers’ interviews revealed different patterns of error types’ preferences from those of students’. The majority of teachers believed that semantic and grammatical errors should receive more attention than other types of errors. Teachers’ views also differed from students’ preferences in terms of correcting errors pertaining to discourse organization and pragmatics. The teachers indicated that these errors are important to correct because meaning is embedded in discourse organization, and thus different skills need to be learned across cultures. The students’ preferences in terms of corrective feedback strategies reveal the following order: metalinguistic, explicit feedback, elicitation, recasts and clarification requests. The most preferred correction methods selected by teachers for correcting students’ oral errors were recasts and prompts in the form of clarification requests, repetition and elicitation. In sum, the study showed that there is a mismatch between teachers’ and students’ viewpoints regarding the appropriateness and usefulness of corrective feedback strategies and demonstrated a clear need for further studies about corrective feedback. (Author’s abstract)