CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

              This initial chapter states the problem and the rationale of the study, together with the aims, objectives, scope, methods and the significance of the whole paper. Above all, it is in this chapter that the research questions are set out to work as the guidelines for the whole research.

1.1.          Statement of the problem and rationale for the study

The requirements of English teaching - learning to meet communicative needs in real life have made traditional teaching methods, whose objectives are the acquisition of grammar and vocabulary, gradually give way to communicative language teaching (CLT) approach. In the light of CLT, “learners need to develop the ability to use the language they are learning appropriately in a given social encounter. ” (Hymes, 1972) This approach, in recent years, has been applied in Vietnam.

In the past, a perfect lesson would be a lesson without students’ mistakes. “Instead of correcting the student, the teacher would say: “Sit down” in a disciplinary way or walk away from the student who had made a mistake. ” (Nguyen, B., Bui, L.C., Truong, V.D., Ho, T.M.H., Nguyen, H., Bao, K. et al., 2003). In contrast, in the communicative approach, making errors is a necessary and natural process of language teaching. Also, correction is an integral part of the lesson. Therefore, it is important for teachers to give corrective feedback on students’ errors.

Researchers have shown that teachers’ corrective feedback enables students to notice the gap between their interlanguage forms and the target language forms. (Schmidt & Frota, 1986). Additionally, corrective feedback from teachers also leads to the enhancement of learners’ metalinguistic