The thesis deals with the themes of fear of making errors, beliefs about errors, self-assessment of actions, and the maintenance of learning motivation. We are interested in all the aforementioned aspects at the moment when students make an error in oral expression in Spanish lessons. At the same time, this paper also covers student reports on teacher attitude towards errors in Spanish lessons and the significance of teacher feedback for them.
The theoretical basis presents the role of errors within selected theories of learning and teaching a foreign language. The current thesis on errors as a positive didactic tool and the related communicative approach are placed in focus, which emphasises the importance of learning from errors and the positive role of emotions in foreign language teaching. In addition, one of the four traditional language skills – oral expression – and the factors individuals face when speaking in a foreign language are described in more detail.
The empirical part presents the results of a quantitative study conducted using an online survey questionnaire. The questionnaire sample included 165 students who are learning Spanish as a second or third foreign language. The research findings indicate that 78 of the students in the sample have distinctly positive beliefs regarding errors, and 10 students have distinctly negative beliefs about errors, while the remaining 77 students are undecided, or their positive beliefs are less apparent. We found that, depending on their beliefs about errors, students differ in some behaviours as well as in maintaining learning motivation after making an error. Of all the activities carried out in Spanish lessons, oral expression activities are those that cause the most fear in students and are at the same time one of the more popular activities. Just over half of the students (87) report fear of making errors. Based on this, we checked whether students who report a greater presence of fear of making errors also report a greater presence of fear of oral expression, and the results showed a positive and moderately strong correlation. According to the students, teachers let them know that making errors in the process of learning a foreign language is inevitable, they should not be horrified by them, nor ignore them. Likewise, students attribute great importance to teacher feedback, take into account their praises or remarks, and believe that feedback contributes to the improvement of foreign language knowledge.
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