Sino-US English Teaching, ISSN 1539-8072 October 2011, Vol. 8, No. 10, 622-628
An Empirical Study of Using Imitation-Based Error Correction to Reduce Repeated Errors in English Writing of Rural Junior High School Students LING Qian, QIU Hong Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, China
Junior high school students in rural areas constitute a particular group of English learners, for whom English writing is not only important, but also difficult. In order to find out an effective means to help them enhance English writing proficiency. To this end, after carefully analyzing the writing characteristics of this group of English learners, one intact class in Grade 8 of No.14 junior middle school in Wuwei was given an experimental treatment which required them to imitate the correct examples of expressions provided by their teacher where they used to make errors. Results revealed that students in experimental class outperform their peers in control class significantly. Keywords: selective and direct error correction, imitation-based, rural junior high school
Introduction Attitudes and approaches towards student error have been a source of debate among SLA (Second Language Acquisition) and L2 (second language) writing scholars for more than two decades (K. Hyland & F. Hyland, 2006, p. 81). In China, error correction constitutes the main part of teacher feedback in response to student English writing. For junior high school students in rural areas, most of them are of a low level of English writing ability due to the limitation of teaching condition, so they commonly lack confidence in writing in English and thirst for teacher feedback that can provide them with adequate information about their errors, which they consider an important means to improve their English writing. In this sense, error correction is not only necessary, but also essential for this particular group. However, full error correction can probably make them overwhelmed from the perspective of affective factors. As to how to correct errors, some researchers support indirect error correction (Lalande, 1982; Ferris, 2006), but for low-level L2 writers, they can hardly correct errors by themselves even if the errors are pointed out for them (Brown, 2002). Therefore, selective and direct error correction is comparatively more suitable for these rural junior high school students. That the same kind of errors repeats over and over again in English writing is a problem which plagues English teachers for a long time. The solution may simply lie in imitation, although it hears to be out of date and LING Qian, associate professor, College of Foreign Languages, Northwest Normal University. QIU Hong, M.A., College of Foreign Languages, Northwest Normal University.