A comparative study on the effectiveness of the use of explicit correction in the improvement of EFL university students’ oral production: grammar and pronunciation accuracy

Abstract

This research study was conducted at a language institute of a public university of the city of Cuenca, Ecuador. The purpose of this study was to know to what extend the use of explicit correction was effective in promoting students’ pronunciation and grammar accuracy in their oral production as well as to know the students’ perception of the use of explicit correction in the treatment of use of language and pronunciation errors. This was a quanti-qualitative study with a quasi- experimental design. Data was gathered by means of pretest, posttest, diagnostic survey and post survey which were applied to a control and experimental group during seven weeks. The participants were male and female students from two intact low-intermediate intensive classes. Results revealed that the experimental group improved their use of language and pronunciation accuracy more than the control group. Also, collected data indicated that students regarded explicit correction as an effective and productive tool in the treatment of grammar and pronunciation errors. Finally, the results revealed that some students opted for delayed error corrections and others preferred immediate error correction.