the present invention provides a method and apparatus for correcting symbol timing of a receiver . the receiver receives a signal transmitted by a transmitter based on a symbol period . the method includes : sampling the signal with a sampling period to generate n sampled data in series , wherein the sampling period is half the symbol period ; from k th data of the n sampled data , getting m data to serve as a first data set ; performing a timing recovery algorithm upon the first data set to generate a first timing metric ; from data of the n sampled data , getting m data to serve as a second data set ; performing the timing recovery algorithm upon the second data set to generate a second timing metric ; and correcting the symbol timing according to the first and second timing metrics .