Error Management Behaviors in EFL Classroom: Teachers' Responses to Students’ Errors

Teachers employ various strategies to deal with the errors that occur in the classroom. The present study aimed to investigate various types of EFL teachers’ error management behaviors and the reasons for employing them. For this purpose, 15 male and female EFL instructors were selected based on availability sampling. Real-time observations were made based on a 21-item checklist in 45 sessions which were all recorded to be transcribed. The participating teachers were interviewed immediately after the sessions to find out why they had employed specific kinds of error management behavior. Intra and inter rater reliability of the qualitative content analyses were ensured through Cohen’s Kappa (κ). The results of qualitative and quantitative content analyses revealed that positive error management was more frequent compared to negative error management behaviors; in addition, the types of error management behavior patterns were dependent on teacher’s perception toward errors. Based on the results of the interview, providing comforting atmosphere, arousing motivation, and encouraging students’ self-confidence were the major reasons for the teachers’ employment of adaptive and positive error management behaviors. However, when students were naughty, inattentive, and careless, the teachers were inclined to use maladaptive behaviors. Lack of enough time to get the correct answer from the students, and avoiding the distraction of students were also the main intentions behind the teachers’ selection of ‘correction by teacher’ category. Keywords: Error, Learners, Error management behaviors, EFL.