Impact of Palestinian EFL Teachers' Attitudes toward Oral Errors on Their Students' Attitudes and Choice of Error Treatment Strategies

Abstract

This mixed-method study, combining both qualitative and quantitative procedures, aimed at investigating the impact of Palestinian EFL teachers' attitudes toward oral errors on their students' attitudes and choice of oral error correction strategies. The study sample consisted of (151) high elementary and secondary school Palestinian EFL teachers and (774) of their students, distributed proportionately between males and females. Both groups responded to a teacher and a student questionnaire respectively. The sample also included (12) teacher participants, each of whom was observed and interviewed twice in the course of the study, and (12) student participants, each of whom took part in two focus group interviews. Data obtained from different sources (i.e. case study vignettes, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, and observations) provided significant evidence that the majority of both Palestinian EFL teachers and students had positive attitudes toward oral errors and their correction as they generally agreed that error correction was necessary for the enhancement of language teaching and learning. However, the data also revealed some discrepancy between students and teachers regarding what, how often, when, how, and by whom errors should be corrected. The study also showed that although students wanted to improve their accuracy in English to be well prepared for accuracy-oriented formal tests, the majority of them preferred not to be marked down on every error they made. Further, the study revealed that different error correction strategies had different cognitive, affective, and behavioral impacts on different students. The study recommends that both EFL teachers and learners develop more positive attitudes toward oral errors and their correction. In addition, teachers should have at their disposal a wide variety of error correction strategies to be able to deal more appropriately and effectively with student oral errors. The study also recommends that teachers get the right amount and timing of error correction for each individual student preferences, language proficiency, personality type, and learning styles, which cannot be achieved without the teachers having a dialogic interaction with their students and students being able to voice up what their perceptions of and preferences for oral error correction strategies are, what errors they want to be corrected, and who should correct them.