A Four-Dimensional Evaluation of Teacher-Student Attitudes towards Spoken Error Treatment

Abstract

Whether negative evidence should be incorporated in or excluded from an SLA or FLA setting has long been a major concern for practitioners and researchers in the SLA and FLA domains. Some (Bowen, Madsen & Hilferty, 1985; Lightbown & Spada, 1990; Fathman & Whalley, 1990; Ferris & Roberts, 2001; Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Askew & Lodge, 2000; and Ashwell, 2000) endorse the use of corrective feedback while others do not (Krashen, 1982; VanPatten, 1988; Dekeyser, 1993; and Truscott, 1996). What these researchers; however, fail to take under advisement in this realm is learners and teachers' Attitudes towards Error Correction (ATEC). The present experiment wishes to address the issue from this angle, i.e., how teachers and learners' attitude converge and/or diverge as far as their attitude towards error correction is concerned. Some 410 students and 34 teachers were invited to fill out the questionnaires. Additionally, 45 students and 13 teachers were interviewed to delve into the versatile facets of error treatment qualitatively. The results showed which error treatment techniques the students and the teachers most and/or least favored. Not only does the analysis of the data support Vahdani and Mirsaidi's (2007) claim on students' ATEC, but also data analysis suggests common grounds can be detected between students' attitudes and those of their teachers. It can, therefore, be concluded that corrective feedback has won the favor of learners and teachers and that in their now statistically tenable estimation it should be factored in FLA settings.