英语论文网

and opinions about how their instruction should be delivered” (p. 59). They suggest that these beliefs and opinions are usually derived from learners’ previous experiences and the assumptions they develop for themselves as regards the best way of learning and instruction for them.

The present study is an attempt to shed light on one of the challenging aspects of writing instruction in EFL classes. In particular, this is an attempt to seek compromise to the as yet two unresolved disputes in the related literature. First, researchers do not seem to be unanimous in considering error feedback in writing as beneficial. Teachers usually find it difficult to know what they should do, and even if they do not, they have a hard time justifying their practice. As such, teachers may feel confused and their practice with regard to writing error correction can best be described as idiosyncratic if not haphazard.

Second, and probably equally important, is the question of the comprehensiveness of error correction. No matter who provides students with feedback on their errors, current body of research seems to be lacking in decisive ways. Owing to the inconsistencies in the findings of the studies conducted so far, teachers are left to decide whether to employ a comprehensive or a selective approach in their writing classes. Again it needs to be pointed out that the approach teachers decide to employ at this point does not determine the one who should correct the errors. Both comprehensive and selective error correction can be done by either the teacher or the peers, or even the student writer themselves. In a word, the present study’s main objective is to help demystify these disputes by drawing on the ideas of the learners proper, those who hold the largest stakes but seem to have been left out, so to speak, in the cold.

Method

This study was an attempt to collate the attitudes, opinions, wants and desires of the students about error feedback in L2 writing instruction and compare the students’ beliefs with those of teachers’. In fact, this study is an effort to understand typical modus operandi in an EFL classroom in Iran and identify the inconsistencies between how teachers think they should teach and how learners think teachers should teach. This might help provide evidence for teachers and even policy makers to account for their inclusion or exclusion of the (oft-neglected) learners’ attitude in the process of making decision as to what is best for them.
Participants

The data used in this study were collected from both EFL learners and teachers. The learners were 56 adult Iranian EFL learners, 59% female and 41% male. They could be considered as advanced learners of English regarding proficiency since they had all finished studying New Interchange Series (Richards, Hull & Proctor) and at the time of data collection they were participating in, as it were, post-Interchange courses such as “Panel Discussion: A Course for Advanced Students” or preparation courses for IELTS, TOEFL, GRE and FCE. Their age range was 17 (excluding an outlier of 46 years old), but all of them were adult learners of English (more than 18 years old) and most of them were university students of different majors.

The teachers were 20 Iranian EFL teachers whose years of work experience of teaching ranged from 1.5 to 11 (average 3.5 years). The teac