Tài liệu Peer correction in reducing errors in english composition by efl studens an action research study

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI UNIVERSITY NGUYEN LE PHUONG PEER CORRECTION IN REDUCING ERRORS IN ENGLISH COMPOSITIONS BY EFL STUDENTS: AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ART IN TESOL SUPERVISOR: NGUYEN DUC HOAT, Ph.D Hanoi, November 2008 ACKNOWLEGEMENTS In the first place, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Nguyen Duc Hoat, my supervisor for his patient guidance, encouragement and constructive supervision throughout my research. Dr. Nguyen Duc Hoat’s enlightening suggestions and comments have shaped this thesis to a larger extent. Without his help this study would have been impossible. Many thanks are also due to my teachers at Hanoi University, particularly to Mrs. Nguyen Thai Ha, M.A, Deputy Head of the Department of Postgraduate Studies for her full support and recommendations on methodology for this thesis. I take this opportunity to express my thankfulness to my first - year students from Thanh Do College of Technology for their wholehearted cooperation in completing the questionnaires, interviews and participating in writing tasks to form a significant part of this study. I am indebted to all those who have kindly advised and helped me towards the completion of my study report. Last but not least, my sincere thanks go to my family and my friends whose support has been of great significance to the success of my thesis. i ABSTRACT This study attempts to investigate the effectiveness of peer correction in reducing errors in English compositions by first – year English major students in Thanh Do College of technology. A class of first – year students (N=30; later N=29) took part in the study, in which they paired up themselves and checked their compositions. Then teacher marked the compositions and did frequency count, comparing the total number of errors in the compositions before peer correction with the number of those that remained after peer correction. Three sets of compositions were investigated. T-test was employed three times to check whether peer correction led to a significant reduction in writing errors in the three sets of compositions respectively. Our findings confirmed that peer correction led to fewer writing errors. All the results of the three compositions were statistically significant. Three pairs of subjects (high-high, high-low and low-low in term of English proficiency) were invited for deeper investigation of peer feedback with different competence levels. Interviews with these three pairs of subjects and questionnaires to all participants were also conducted. It was found that peer correction was effective in all types of pairings (high-high, low-low and high-low), with the strongest effect in the last type, and 97% of the subjects considered peer correction useful and claimed that they would apply it in the future. The author has suggested some recommendations for teaching and learning writing skills, so that the teaching and learning writing at Thanh Do College of Technology can gain more effectiveness. ii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Tables: Table 2.1.1: Comparison between the product – based approach and the process – oriented approach .............................................................................................................. 7 Table 2.1.2: Steps of writing in the product – based approach ......................................... 8 Table 2.1.3: Steps of writing in the process – based approach ......................................... 8 Table 3.2.1: Action research cycle.................................................................................. 30 Table 3.2.2: Marking codes ............................................................................................ 32 Table 3.2.3: Example of using marking codes................................................................ 33 Table 4.1: Final term test results ..................................................................................... 42 Table 4.2: Number of students per error types in the final term test .............................. 42 Table 4.3: Data on types of errors corrected ................................................................... 44 Table 4.4: Students’ attitudes towards teacher feedback ................................................ 44 Table 4.5: Students’ attitudes towards self – monitoring feedback ................................ 46 Table 4.6: Paired Samples Statistics ............................................................................... 50 Table 4.7: Paired Samples Correlations .......................................................................... 50 Table 4.8: Paired Samples Test....................................................................................... 50 Table 4.9: Mean of success rate of three tasks ............................................................... 51 Table 4.10: Mean of errors of students of different standards in three writing tasks ..... 52 Table4.11: The success rate of peer correction (unit: %) ............................................... 52 Table 4.12: The Mean of success rate of peer correction in different pairings .............. 52 Table 4.13: Difference of errors suggested by the students in three writing tasks ......... 53 Table 4.14: Examples of some grammatical errors suggested by the students............... 54 Table 4.15: Peaks of effectiveness of peer correction .................................................... 56 Table 4.16: Students opinions about peer feedback when they received feedback ........ 60 Table 4.17. Students’ opinions about peer feedback when they gave feedback ............. 62 iii Figures Figure 1: Feedback model............................................................................................... 17 Figure 2: Differences of errors suggested by the students in the writing tasks .............. 54 Figure 3: Time for peer correction .................................................................................. 57 iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AR Action Research EFL English as a Foreign Language ESL English as a Second Language ELT English Language Teaching L1 The Mother Tongue Language L2 The Second / Target language SPSS Statistical Package for Social Science CTD Thanh Do College of Technology UG Universal Grammar v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEGEMENTS ............................................................................................... i ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... ii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES............................................................................. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................ v CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 1 1.1. Background to the study ........................................................................................ 1 1.2. Aims of the study................................................................................................... 3 1.4. Significance of the study ....................................................................................... 4 1.5. Outline of the study ............................................................................................... 4 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................................... 5 2.1. Theoretical background to the teaching of writing................................................ 5 2.1.1. Definition of writing ....................................................................................... 5 2.1.2. Approaches to the teaching of writing............................................................ 6 2.2. Theories on language learning and error treatment ............................................... 9 2.2.1. Approaches’ views towards learners’ errors ............................................... 10 2.2.2. Definition of errors ...................................................................................... 13 2.3. Ways to reduce writing errors and peer feedback ............................................... 16 2.3.1. Definition of feedback .................................................................................. 16 2.3.2. Feedback types ............................................................................................ 18 2.3.3. The role of feedback and peer feedback ...................................................... 23 Chapter III: METHODOLODY ................................................................................. 28 3.1. Research questions .............................................................................................. 28 3.2. Research method ................................................................................................. 28 3.2.1. Action research (AR) ................................................................................... 28 3.2.2. Action research procedures ......................................................................... 30 3.3. Data collection instruments ................................................................................. 35 3.3.1. Document analysis....................................................................................... 35 3.3.2 Questionnaires .............................................................................................. 36 3.3.3. Interviews .................................................................................................... 38 3.3.4. Teaching log ................................................................................................ 39 3.4 The subjects of the study ...................................................................................... 40 vi CHAPTER IV: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION ......................................... 42 4.1. Initial data ............................................................................................................ 42 4.1.1. Results from students’ final term test ........................................................... 42 4.1.2. Results from questionnaire 1 ........................................................................ 43 4.1.3. Summary of the findings from the initial data ............................................. 48 4.2. Data collected from the action plan implementation ........................................... 49 4.2.1. The effectiveness of peer feedback in reducing students’ writing errors collected from three writing task paper analysis .................................................... 49 4.2.2. Types of errors suggested by students in the three writing tasks ..................... 53 4.2.3. The effectiveness of peer feedback on students’ attitudes collected from the teaching log ............................................................................................................ 56 4.2.4. Summary of the data collected from the action plan implementation ......... 59 4.3. Post data .......................................................................................................... 60 4.3.1. Students’ positive attitudes towards peer feedback ..................................... 60 4.4. Summary.............................................................................................................. 64 CHAPTER V: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION .............................. 67 5.1. Recommendations ............................................................................................... 67 5.2 Limitations ............................................................................................................ 69 5.4. Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 69 REFERECES ................................................................................................................ 71 APPENDIX 1: TEACHING LOG ............................................................................... 75 APPENDIX 2: QUESTIONNAIRE 1 (ENGLISH VERSION) ................................ 76 APPENDIX 3: PHIẾU ĐIỀU TRA SỐ 1 .................................................................... 78 APPENDIX 4: QUESTIONNAIRE 2 (ENGLISH VERSION) ................................ 80 APPENDIX 5: PHIẾU ĐIỀU TRA SỐ 2 .................................................................... 82 APPENDIX 6: INTERVIEW ....................................................................................... 84 APPENDIX 7: CRITERIA FOR WRITING ASSESSMENT .................................. 85 APPENDIX 8: WRITING TOPICS ............................................................................ 86 APPENDIX 9: WRITING DRAFTS OF SIX STUDENTS ...................................... 88 IN THREE CHOSEN PAIRS ...................................................................................... 88 APPENDIX 10: NUMBER OF ERRORS BEFORE AND AFTER PEER CORRECTION FROM THE THREE TASKS ....................................................... 106 vii viii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION This chapter introduces the background to the study, states the aims, the scope of the study and presents the outline of the rest of the thesis. 1.1. Background to the study Peer feedback is considered as a modern and effective way of giving feedback in writing along with a shift from the writing as a product to writing as a process in the pedagogy of ESL writing. However, in spite of the fact that the use of peer feedback as a ESL writing classroom has been generally supported in the literature as a potentially valuable way of correcting errors (Celce, 2001), English teachers as well as students still bear a lot of doubts about its value, procedures to carry it out and time control etc. And these may prevent them from using peer feedback in right conditions and highly profitable interaction on many counts. There have been a number of studies done on the value of peer feedback and response of both students and teachers toward it over the last decade. According to Lewis (2002: 21), there are many reasons for introducing peer feedback to writing classes as follow:  Proofreading other people’s work prepares you for proofreading your own.  You have a greater variety of suggestions  Peer feedback is instant feedback.  It is boring if all your feedback comes from the teacher every day. They reported that peer feedback is effective and useful at various levels. According to Rollinson (2005:25), Peer feedback, with its potentially high level of response and interaction between reader and writer, can encourage a collaborative dialogue in which two – way feedback is established, and meaning is negotiated between the two parties. Moreover, some studies reveal that students feel relax and interested in discussing over their partner’s writing (Sun 2006). In a study carried out at Hanoi university of Mining 1 and Geology (2007), Hang, Nguyen found out that there is a synergistic relationship between student homework completions within the organization of peer correction on students’ homework. It not only improved students’ grammar competence but also their attitude toward learning English, toward homework, and teacher attitude toward students. For this reason, researches confirmed that peer feedback was better than teacher feedback, where the students might end up making revisions without necessarily agreeing with or even understanding the teachers’ authoritative comments. Most of the studies focused on getting students and teachers’ responses towards peer feedback or that in comparison with other way of correcting errors. In some other studies, there remains a controversial result that peer feedback that has been judged by the participants is less helpful than the teachers’ feedback (Ghosh, 1998). In Viet Nam in general as well as in Thanh Do College of technology where the writer of this paper is teaching, the product-oriented approach to writing, which requires single drafts and emphasizes on grammar corrections, has been adopted in most of writing course or program for quite a long time. Thus, teacher error correction is highly considered as the traditional and most effective writing feedback. As the ultimate purpose of marking is to draw the student’s attention to his errors so that he will not repeat them, teachers are strongly urged to mark students’ writings by many ways such as locating writing mistakes with a set of standardized marking codes in school, showing what kind of the errors are or correcting all the errors for students. Teachers are also encouraged to insist their students to read over their work carefully to avoid careless slips. Despite these efforts, it is not uncommon to hear teachers complaining that some students still exhibit remarkable consistency in committing the same errors, and that students’ writing performance never justifies their considerable time and effort involved. Students are also disheartened as their written efforts are always returned with many red markings. Repeated frustration, of course, reduces their motivation to write. No wonder very often, English composition is a burden to many Vietnamese teachers and students. And peer feedback, for them, is just a case in book and schedule only or carried out inattentively or without substantial care. From the fact mentioned above, it is of great urgency, scientific and realistic usage to lead an in-depth investigation on the application of peer feedback in writing in CTD in order to evaluate the effectiveness of peer feedback – whether it is a way reducing 2 errors in English compositions, and to create a relaxing and enthusiastic learning environment for students in writing lessons or not. This has inspired me to conduct the following study on peer feedback. 1.2. Aims of the study This research is designed to investigate peer feedback on 1st-year students’ writings at the Department of English, CTD. The aims of the study are to: 1. evaluate the effectiveness of peer correction in reducing errors in written composition among the first year students, especially in CTD; 2. investigate students’ reactions towards peer correction in writing and 3. propose some recommendations and suggestions for using peer correction in reducing errors in composition by Vietnamese students. An Action Research, which concerns with finding solutions for problems in real and practical situations, was carried out in order to obtain above aims. 1.3. Scope of the study Feedback is such a broad topic that cannot be wholly discussed within the framework of this paper, therefore, only one specific and commonly-practiced aspect to feedback will be central to the discussion that is peer feedback. Every EFL composition class needs feedback in order to revise their papers successfully; however, the ideal subject chosen for this research is not general English learners but the 1st-year major English students at the English Department, CTD. In fact, the 1st-year students, when entering the university, are mostly beginners in academic writing. Apart from teaching writing skill, teachers, therefore, are supposed to provide regular feedback on their writing as a motivation to their study as well as to inform students how much they have progressed in their writing. Besides, these students are being taught writing skills under the process-based approach. However, by the end of the first term, both teachers and students are not satisfied with result of students’ writing. It seems that teachers’ feedback could help little in improving students’ writing. This research therefore, tried to adapt another kind of feedback known as peer feedback 3 to first-year students’ writings to examine whether it is effective or not, and to propose recommendations to improve it for the benefit of the students’ revision. This point would be made clear to the participants in the survey. This would make the study more feasible and its results more applicable into the real classroom. 1.4. Significance of the study Although this research only looks at one type of feedback, peer feedback, the answers to the proposed questions hope to provide insights into both how students have actually provided feedback to their friends’ writing and what are the students’ attitudes towards the feedback they received. This may probably lead to suggestions for improving peer feedback and helping the students utilize it more successfully in their revision. 1.5. Outline of the study This study consists of five chapters: Chapter I introduces the background to the study, aims, scope as well as the significance and design of the study. Chapter II reviews the literature on the writing teaching, errors in general and peer feedback in particular. Chapter III describes the research methods used in the process of doing the thesis. It consists of the justification of research methods and data collection, the data collection instruments, the procedure to collect data and the analysis of data. The subject of the study is also mentioned in this chapter. Chapter IV presents the results and discussion of peer feedback, and of the student’s attitudes towards peer feedback. Chapter V offers some suggestions for further improvements in peer feedback on students writing and provides future directions for further research which are not touched upon in the limit of this thesis. 4 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter reviews important issues in the theories of teaching writing, errors in writing in general and feedback in particular. Three main features will be taken under consideration, namely, theoretical background to the teaching writing, errors and theories on Language Acquisition and their perspectives on learners’ errors and theoretical background to feedback. They are also the foundation on which the questionnaires for the teachers and students are set up. 2.1. Theoretical background to the teaching of writing 2.1.1. Definition of writing In comparison with the existence of mankind and in the evolution of human beings, it is apparent that human writing activity is a fairly recent development and has encountered a great deal of changes not only in meanings but also in forms (Harmer, 2004). On its long way, writing has been defined in a number of ways under different points of views. Writing, as simply defined by Byrne (1991:1), is an “act of forming graphic symbols”, that is, letters or combination of letters. In the most basic form, writing is like “making marks on the flat surface of some kinds”. Lannon (1989:9), however, sees writing as a far more complicated process than the production of graphic symbols. It is “a process of transforming the material you discover - by research inspiration, accident, trial and error, or whatever - into a message with a definite meaning. In other words, “writing is a process of deliberate decision”. From another view of writing, Murray (1978:3) defines writing as "the most disciplined form of thinking. It allows us to be precise, to stand back and examine what we have thought, to see what our words really mean, to see if they stand up to our own critical eye, make sense, will be understood by someone else”. Thus, writer from his point of view writes to learn, to explore beyond the known content and in fact, writing and rewriting is a process of discovery. The writers often start writing without knowing exactly what they want to say, but discover it as they write their preliminary drafts. 5 They then review and edit them till they are satisfied that the final writing adequately matches their message to the audience's expectations. Moreover, writing is also defined as a social process by Cadlin and Hall (1999:107). They state, “Writing is therefore an engagement in a social process, where the production of text reflects methodologies, arguments and rhetorical strategies constructed to engage colleagues and persuade them of the claims that are made.” Sharing the same idea with Cadlin and Hall, Pincas (1982:28) emphasizes writing as “an integral part of everyday life”. He indicates a vast range of writing activities that are used closely linked with social life of the writers: “from writing for oneself, where there are few conventions of style, through public and personal information, where there are some conventions, to largely impersonal written communication where there fairly strict formalities to be observed”. In Pincas’ opinion, writing should be seen to fulfill the sort of daily life communicative purposes, or functions. Pincas also suggests a strong incentive for writing by the use of group activities and games within the writing lesson. That writing or composition has been defined in a variety of ways shows a lack of consensus as to what composition is, and reflects the complexity of the writing process. Herein this study, the writer prefers Pincas’s opinion that writing should be as “communicative or functional”, as possible. Although it has got such a reputation of "a language skill which is difficult to acquire" (Tribble, 1996:3), it is of great importance to find out appropriate approaches and techniques to obtain its optimal purposes of writing skill, not as a means to teach other aspects of language (Ur, 1996:162). 2.1.2. Approaches to the teaching of writing There have been a number of conflicting views of the best ways of teaching writing. Raimes (1992) identifies three principle ways of approaching the task; namely; the textbased approach, the genre based-approach and the process approach. But the two most common and popularly known at the moment are product - based approach and the process –oriented approach (Nunan, 1991). The product – based approach was considered one of the very common approaches to teaching writing in the 1960s. The primary concern of this approach was really “with the completed written product, not with the strategies and processes involved in its 6 production or with the nature of any learning that might be acquired” (Kroll, 2001:220). The purpose of this approach, as noted by Kroll, is primarily to reinforce language rules, not for purposes such as addressing a topic or communicating with an audience. The writing tasks, therefore, are regularly tightly controlled in order to reduce the possibilities of errors. It is also believed that after having grasped language rules and writing skills, students would be able to deal with writing that is more complicated, for instance, more complex sentences and sophisticated paragraphs. However, there were number of criticism and forces that converged in the 1970s to change the traditional way of teaching writing. Thus, a process writing approach, which focuses on the process of writing instead of its products, the well-polished compositions, emerged and gradually had a profound influence on the teaching compositions. This approach views that writing is a process which contains a number of distinct stages or activities the writers have to go through in order to produce a good piece of writing. But this process is not a straight forward plan - outline - write process that many believe it to be; rather it is “not as a fixed sequence but as a dynamic and unpredictable process” (Tribble, 1996:165). The process approach to teaching writing emphasizes the writer as an independent producer of texts so that teachers allow their students' time and opportunity to develop students' abilities to plan, define a rhetorical problem, and propose and evaluate solutions. Response is crucial in assisting learners to move through the stages of the writing process, and various means of providing feedback are used, including teacher-student conferences, peer response, audio taped feedback, and reformulation (Hyland, 2003). Obviously, process approach has been referred to as a dominant trend in teaching writing today in EFL settings today. Nearly all writing courses provide for a process approach although they can be radically different in curriculum and types of writing skills. It seems that student writers engage in their writing tasks through a “cyclical” approach rather than through a “single-shot” approach (Kroll, 2001:220). In his book, Nunan (1991) introduced these two approaches in teaching writing and the differences between them clearly as follows: Table 2.1.1: Comparison between the product – based approach and the process – oriented approach The product – based approach The process – oriented approach - Favour classroom activities in which - Favour collaborative group work and 7 the learners individually imitate copy and transform models of correct language, usually at the level of sentences - Organisation of ideas is more important than ideas themselves - Emphasize grammar exercises and correctness conferencing to enhance motivation and positive attitude toward writing. Model texts are only for comparison. - Ideas are more important - Emphasize quantity rather than quality, which means the learners are encouraged to get their ideas on paper without worrying too much about correctness. - Focus on the end result of the writing - Focus on the various forms of classroom process: the writing paper of learners. activities which promote the development of language use. - Learners only produce one final draft. - The final draft is the result of a long and painful process of writing successive drafts. To be more specifically, it is of necessity to have a look at the stages of each approach to have clearer view of them. The steps in a product – based writing class are similar like these: Table 2.1.2: Steps of writing in the product – based approach Stage 1: Model texts are read, and then features of the genre are highlighted Stage 2: This includes an individual controlled practice of the highlighted features. Stage 3: Organizing ideas Stage 4: The end result of the writing process: learners use all the skills, structures and vocabulary they have learned to produce the product. Meanwhile, the number of stages constituting process-oriented approach writing remains controversial. The process of writing, as stated by Harmer (2004:5), is not linear, but rather “recursive”. This means that writers plan, draft and edit but then often re-write, re-draft and re-edit. Zemarch and Rumisek (2003:3) view this process as a classroom activity concluding the four following basic writing stages: Planning; drafting; reviewing and revising; and rewriting with six smaller steps in which steps five and six can be repeated many times as follows: Table 2.1.3: Steps of writing in the process – based approach Pre-writing: Step 1: Choose a The teacher gives students a specific assignment or some ideas of what to write about. topic. Step 2: Gather When students have a topic, they think about what they will write 8 ideas Step 3: Organize about that topic. Students decide which of the ideas they want to use and when they want to use them. Choose which ideas to talk about first, which to talk about next and which to talk last. Drafting Step 4: Write Students write their own paragraph or essay from start to finish using the notes about their ideas and organization. Reviewing and revising Step 5: Review Students check what they have written. They read their writing structure and silently to themselves or aloud, perhaps to a friend while looking for places where they can add more information, and check to see content if they have any unnecessary information. They should ask classmates to change papers to each other to proofread. Students may want to go on to step six now and revise the structure and content of their paper before proofreading. Rewriting Revise structure Students use their own ideas from step five to re-write their texts making improvements to the structure and content. They might and content need to explain something more clearly, and add more details. They may even need to change their organization so that their papers are more logical. Together, steps five and six can be called editing. Students read the paper again. This time, they check their spelling Proofread and grammar and think about the words they have chosen to use. Make final Students check that they have corrected the errors they discovered in steps five and six and make any other changes they want to corrections make. Now the writing is finished. Yet, it should be pointed out that the choice of the most appropriate approach should always be made in relation to a particular group of learners and after a great deal of needs analysis, which means that in many cases the teacher might need to implement a teaching model that integrates principles of several approaches. However, from the above summary, process writing seems to develop students’ autonomy in learning as well as train them to be masters in writing. Thus, up till now process writing has been highly appreciated and adapted by many teachers. 2.2. Theories on language learning and error treatment Learning a foreign language is believed to be a complex process which involves a lot of variables. There exists a belief that the deeper the understanding of this process is, the more significance it bears to foreign language learning and teaching. Furthermore, this 9 belief is enhanced by the recent shift in focus from content to learners with learner – centred approach in which the learners are active participants and decisive of their own learning. Therefore, researchers have carried out numbers of studies to investigate into the foreign language learning process in order to have a deeper insight into learners’ characteristics, attitudes and motivation. Then, based on these insights into the foreign learning process, suitable and useful foreign language teaching methods would be built. There have been numbers of theories with different views on language learning in general and errors in particular as the following mentioned ones. 2.2.1. Approaches’ views towards learners’ errors 2.2.1. 1. Behaviorism Behaviourist ideas, which rejected the study of the mind as unscientific and sought to explain the learning in terms of imitation, practice, reinforcement and habit formation (Lightbown & Spada, 2002), dominated the field of language acquisition from the fifties to sixties. To the behaviorists, language is a verbal behavior and learning a language is not unlike leaning anything else. Skinner (1957:10), a prominent behaviorist, stated, “We have no reason to assume …that verbal behavior differs in any fundamental respect from non – verbal behavior, or that any new principles must be invoked to account for it”. Their notion is that if a particular response is reinforced, it then becomes habitual, or conditioned (Brown 1987). Behaviourist proponents consider language a fundamental part of total human behaviour that can be carried out without the conscious use of one’s cognitive processes (Wilkins 1972), and effective language behaviour is the production of correct responses to stimuli. And for the language learning to take place there must be opportunities for imitation, repetition drill or practice. Audio-lingual approach, which advocated drills and practice, was thus in full swing in that period of time. Students, under this approach, are to practise using basic sentence patterns and grammatical structures intensively. With the stimulus-response method, should errors occur, the learners’ carelessness, inadequate teaching techniques or unsequenced instructional materials are to blame. The making of errors is also said to largely arise from the mother tongue interference with the view that old habits inhibit the correct utterances to be established (Lightbown & Spada, 2002). The native and target languages are thus compared to find out the differences this in turn, can help to 10 predict the difficulties learners would encounter. Then special treatments, teaching methods or drillings will be given so as to overcome the difficulties and avoid the existence of errors. This is known as “Contrastive Analysis” (Ellis, 1997:52). And as Behaviourists believe that wrong forms are signs of failure, and are very difficult to eradicate, they contend that whenever a mistake is made, the teacher should correct it immediately and repeat the correct pattern for the learners to drill again and again until the target form of language acquired. In a word, errors are like “sin” and must be avoided from Behaviourists’ point of view. They are to be prevented or eliminated by frequent practice (Corder 1967). 2.2.1. 2. Innatism In reaction to what Chomsky saw as the inadequacy of the behaviorist theory of learning based on imitation and habit formation, he proposed a theory called innatism which asserts that language acquisition is innately determined (Le, 2004). According to Chomsky, “children’s minds are not blank slates merely imitating language they hear in the environment but they are born with a special ability to discover for themselves the underlying rules for a language system” (cited in Lightbown & Spada, 2002:16). He argues that there is a central force guiding language acquisition. Learners are able to create and understand an infinite number of sentences with a finite number of rules as they have internalised the underlying systems of rules. Noam Chomsky called this “Language Acquisition Device”. Chomsky and his followers later refer to the child’s innate endowment as Universal Grammar (UG). Although Chomsky had not made specific claims about the implications of his theory for second language learning, some linguistics working within this theory agued that UG offer best perspective from which to understand second language acquisition. The role of UG in second language acquisition is still under discussion with three possibilities as follows: UG operates in the same way for L2 (the target language) as it does for L1 (the mother tongue language); UG is no longer available to the L2 learners, or it is partly available in the acquisition of L2 (Richards, 1992). In terms of UG’s perspective on error correction, researchers working within the UG framework have different ideas about how formal instruction or error correction will affect the learner’s knowledge of the second language (cited in Lightbown & Spada, 2002). While some UG linguistics argue that second language learners neither need nor 11