Raising the Concern with Written Error Gravity in the Foreign Language Classroom. Reflecting on The Tunisian Context

Document from the year 2026 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, , language: English, abstract: The objective of this study is to examine how written errors are evaluated in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms, with particular emphasis on the role of teaching experience and assessment criteria in shaping judgments of error gravity. The research is situated in the Tunisian higher education context, where systematic guidelines for prioritizing written errors remain limited. Grounded in applied linguistics and pedagogical research, the study explores how teachers perceive, categorize, and respond to learners' written errors. It adopts a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative data. Fifty essays written by third-year management students were analyzed following an established error analysis model. In addition, twenty Tunisian EFL teachers participated in a scale-based questionnaire, while a subset of teachers contributed to semi-structured interviews, allowing for deeper insights into their evaluative reasoning.