English Error Correction Feedback among Selected College Freshmen in the University of Eastern Philippines

This study centered on the feedback on error correction based on the preferences of the randomly selected ninety college freshmen enrolled in the second semester of school year 2015-2016 in the University of Eastern Philippines. Specifically, it drew up the profile of the respondents in terms of age, sex, and type of secondary school they graduated from. The students view on the importance of the various writing features such as grammar, spelling, punctuation, organization, writing style, and ideas were elicited. It also determined the students concern for accuracy, and their preferences for paper-marking techniques. Furthermore, it looked into the significant relationship between the students profile and their preferences then went on to find out if there was significant difference between the students error correction preferences in their first and final drafts. Most of the respondents were 16 to 17 years old, female and graduated from public or national secondary schools. On the written exercise, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary choice were the most important features of writing that the students wanted to be responded to by the teachers both in the first and final drafts. The students were greatly concerned with accuracy since they agreed that it is important to them to have as few errors as possible in their written work. As for paper-marking techniques, the findings revealed that the students preferred their teachers to use correction or proof-reading symbols to point out errors in both first and final drafts. In addition, they chose the teachers technique of crossing out the error and writing in the correction as the best response to a first draft. For the final draft, the students chose showing where the error is and giving a clue about how to correct it. The majority of the students preferred their teachers to correct all errors, major and minor when responding to a first draft than to a final draft. As to the relationship between the profile of the students and their preferences, the findings showed that age, sex, and type of high school graduated from were significantly related with preferences. No significant difference, however, was found between the students preferences for error correction in the first and the final drafts. On the whole, the research participants feedback on the paper-marking techniques of the freshman English teachers is a good input to the teaching of writing. This investigations significance lies in its being able to improve the teaching of writing. The final recommendation, therefore, is for all writing students and teachers to read this studys results that they may know that students have paper-marking preferences which they could use as effective springboards for teaching writing.