Teachers' perception, students' perception and satisfaction on the implementation of innovative ways of written error correction in English language teaching classes with special reference to grade 10 students of two secondary schools in Bako Tibe Woreda

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to investigate the teachers' perception, students' perception and satisfaction on the implementation of innovative ways of learner written error correction in English Language Teaching (ELT) classes. The participants of this study were 8 teachers and 259 students at Bako and Tibe Secondary Schools of the 2007 academic year. The researcher used descriptive survey method. For this purpose, questionnaires (for both the teachers and students), interview for the teachers, and corrected and returned students written documents were used as source of data gathering instrument. The result of the study revealed that the practice of learner written error correction is not innovative. Moreover, the task of giving correction to learner written errors is not the teachers' regular classroom concern. The teachers quite dominantly use teacher correction while other types of correction are employed rarely. They also use few indirect techniques of correction than the direct ones. The study also indicated that the teachers focus more on form and mechanics rather than content and organization when correcting students' written works. Regarding the findings obtained, students lack of getting written feedback regularly from their teacher, teachers are not using innovative ways in correcting students' written works, teachers are being selective when correcting; they focus on form and mechanics drowned as a conclusions. Some of the recommendation include: Teachers should be aware of the theoretical framework of providing correction in an innovative manner and other related areas; they should be understood that correction is an aspect of teaching; they should employ the different techniques of correction in a balanced manner; they should be provided with some orientations so that they could do correction in an innovative way when responding to their students' composition, etc.