The Effect of Teacher Correction vs. Peer Correction on Iranian EFL Learners’ Correct Use of Prepositions in Essay Writing

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of teachers' error correction vs. peer correction on Iranian
EFL learners’ correct use of prepositions in essay writing. To fulfill the purpose of this study, 90
intermediate female EFL learners from 200 candidates of one institute in Tehran, aged between
16-28 were chosen by cluster random sampling. After the administration of Nelson general
language proficiency and writing pre-test, 50 learners who were at the same level of written
English proficiency were randomly divided into two experimental groups of 25. Next, 12 sessions
treatment in which the participants received two correction types of feedback i.e. teacher
correction and peer correction started. Then, the participants were required to write a
composition as posttest. The result of the independent t-test revealed that peer-correction is more
effective than teacher correction and the differences between the two groups were statistically
significant. The findings suggested that peer-correction was much more effective than the
traditional teacher-correction. The findings of the present study may be beneficial for materials
developers in designing syllabi that are more adaptable with those peer correction methods
which help language learners to improve their writing’s errors properly.