Iranian EFL Learners and Their Teachers’ Preferences For Oral Error Correction

This study aimed at investigating oral error correction preferences of Iranian EFL learners, and the degree of teachers awareness of them. To this end, one hundred and fifty language learners (males and females) from intermediate and advanced levels of instruction and different ages (15-45), studying at five language institutes took part in this study. As a further step, fifty teachers were asked for cooperation. This article discusses the findings of a questionnaire that utilized 5-point Likert-scales, and investigated 1) students preferences for how, when, who, which, and should of correcting oral errors, and 2) teachers awareness of these preferences. The results showed that students had generally positive attitudes toward teacher correction of oral errors. They also liked immediate correction of pronunciation errors and delayed correction of grammatical errors the results also indicated a preference for teacher correction and self-correction of errors over peer correction. Furthermore, they preferred correcting pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary errors over other types of errors. The teachers were aware of the students preferences of some cases, but unaware in some other