The Effects of Teacher, Guided, and Self Error Correction on Iranian EFL Learners’ L2 Writing Accuracy

Abstract

This study tried to answer some questions regarding the most effective ways to give feedback to students' errors in writing by comparing the effect of three different types of error correction (i.e. teacher error-correction, guided error-correction, and self error-correction) on students' writing accuracy. In order to achieve this goal, 90 pre-intermediate English learners were chosen based on an Oxford Placement Test. A pretest was used to check the initial knowledge of the learners in writing accuracy. All the participants wrote descriptive paragraphs on different topics during the treatment procedure. Student’s writings were checked based on different treatment type. After revising the students’ writing on each session the teacher asked the participants to write on a new topic in the same genre. After three weeks, the teacher gave the participants a posttest to check the learners’ improvement. A t-test was used to compare each group’s performance before and after the treatment and then one way between groups ANOVA was conducted to compare the scores of three groups’ performance in their pretest and posttest. The results suggested that guided error-correction led to significant improvement in the learners’ writing accuracy. This study can be significant in the sense that errors are a part of learning a new language and teachers should help the students to overcome their mistakes to some extent, not give the students the exact correct answer. Not giving the exact answer will force students to think about their errors, correct them, and better remember them in their future writing.