This blog post considers error correction, more specifically with regards to speaking.

Why error correction?

I had one of those moments. I caught myself mid-sentence whilst teaching and asked ‘what am I doing?’. I need to consider my approach to error correction as my current one is detrimental to my students.  This week I have been teaching narrative tenses, adverbs /adverbial phrases and elements of speech e.g. pronunciation, intonation, juncture, connected speech. The lessons culminated in the students telling a personal story using these parts of language. We had also been focusing on echo and reply questions which would provide natural interjections whilst the story was being told.

As the students took turns to tell their tale. The stories were interesting and varied though the interjections did sometimes feel stilted and unnatural. What came closest to spoiling the lesson was my error correction. I repeatedly halted proceedings when students made mistakes. This interrupted the rhythm of what was supposed to be a retelling of an anecdote. Whether we can recreate a realistic environment within the classroom is another story altogether.

Was continually interruption the most effective form of error correction? As we progressed through the nine stories I noticed that as I corrected the students merely repeated the reformulation. Was I right to be focusing on this at that precise moment? How could I do this without being detrimental to the activity? Understandably, their minds where not focusing on this but on that which they had been working towards all week – their story. This got me thinking about the appropriate time in which to give feedback and the correct method with which to conduct that correction. It is such a common occurrence in the classroom and requires further investigation.

Emerging questions

Did I interrupt at an appropriate time?

Should I have waited for the student to finish and then done the correction?

If I correct mid-sentence, will that help or hinder the student?

Will spoken/non-verbal correction be advantageous to the student or will students take it more seriously if it is boarded?

Research

I decided to do some research and look for techniques that beneficial to the learners. Barefoot TEFL Teacher website states that “Non-verbal (NV) is the best” though it does not give a comparison with verbal error correction to substantiate this.  It claims that the best error correction has the following three elements :

• Timeliness – it happens as close to the error occurring as possible
• Personalisation – correction is tailored to the individual (rather than general class feedback
• Reformulation – the student has the chance to try again until correct.

I believe that there are issues concerning these statements which I would contest regarding my own experiences in the classroom re:

Timeliness: If I interrupt the student then would I not disturb the thought process? I found that interrupt during the story telling was not effective for the students as they could not properly concentrate at that moment.So perhaps error correction could be saved for after the activity.

After further consideration, I believe that it is best to approach error correction depending on the type of activity. If it is storytelling – take notes and broach the subject afterwards, if it is a social discussion – ignore it, if it is a feedback session from a grammar activity, then at that moment.

Personalisation: Some students do not appear to enjoy being the focus of the class especially regarding mistakes so a more generic approach could be more beneficial as it would afford some students more anonymity. Alternatively, make the student aware that this type of mistake is common due to grammar differences between languages or pronunciation errors typical to a specific their mother tongue.

Reformulation: It has been my experience that if error correction has to be repeated until it is performed correctly then this experience can cause embarrassment not just to the individual but to the whole class. In some instances, a student simply cannot identify the distinction being made between different vowel phonemes. There needs to be a cut off point where error correction can become detrimental to the individual and/or the group.

 

Different techniques in verbal and non-verbal correction

I have been investigating different techniques for verbal and non verbal error correction.

Verbal

1 Explicit correction

The teacher tells the student what the correct utterance is.

For me, this is a techniques without advantages, though perhaps needed at lower levels. The student is not given the skills to make a correction only the correct language therefore it would seem likely that no development has occurred.

2 Clarification request

Using phrases such as ‘Sorry?’ or ‘I don’t understand.’ to indicate that there has been an error is more effective than the previous techniques as the student must consciously analyse what they have said and, if possible, self correct.

What I don’t like about this is the language employed. I feel that a better approach is to ask the student to reconsider by using a phrase such as ‘Are you sure that is right?’ which seems more polite and respectful. What I do like about it is that it does not specifically identify the error so the learner must consider all parts of the utterance.

3 Metalinguistic

….is where the teacher asks a question related to the form that the student uses without explicit correct. For example, ‘Is this the correct context for past simple?’. I employ this techniques in class and believe it works proficiently unless there is a student in class who has little or no metalingual knowledge. This has happened with a very high level Dutch group I have taught.

4 Elicitation

The teacher repeats the utterance produced by the student and pauses where the error was made. I believe that this feels a bit like spoon-feeding the student and does ask enough questions of their comprehension of what they are producing.

5 Repetition

The teacher repeats the student’s utterance using rising intonation of the error in order to repair it. This again gives indication at a very base level understanding yet of course would be useful regarding pronunciation. However, I believe that we should demand more from our students and give less indication as to what the error is, especially regarding grammar.

6 Peer correction

The teacher encourages the other students to give guidance to the learner making the error. Thus making this a group activity rather than focussing solely on one student. It also increases the agency in the classroom which is empowering for the learners.

Non verbal

1 Gesture/Facial expressions

What I tend to do in class is to raise a quizzical eyebrow, lower my eyebrows to intimate “are you sure? please think again” or squint. Other techniques can also be employed and busyteacher.org suggest pointing. For example, the student says ‘I went to the cinema with your boyfriend,’ then the teacher points at themselves indicating that an error has been made and reconsideration is needed. In addition, a circling of the finger can indicate that the student needs to recast the sentence.

2 A grammar flag

Busyteacher.org also suggest using a ‘little red flag’  to alert students to their mistakes. This indicates students should reconsider their reformulate their utterance.

My first impression is that this might be considered belittling to the learner.

3 Visual reminders

Students often forget the final S in the present simple third person singular and so busyteacher.org recommends putting a large red S on the wall. Of course, this is just an example of using visual reminders in the classroom setting.  When the student makes the error the teacher then points to the visual on such occasions and, hopefully, triggers the correct response.

This is such a common error that I have often considered having a t-shirt printed with the S on. I can see the convenience of this type of visual reminder yet wonder whether it might be considered insulting to the student.  However I do like the idea of visual classroom aids which reduce the need for teacher talk time or interrupting the students when it isn’t beneficial. Perhaps each classroom could have a timeslot for each learner to record errors and look for patterns. The student is then building a diary of mistakes and given greater awareness regarding their regularity. This is in contrast to purely spoken error correction which I rarely see students making note of.

4 Finger counting

A student asks ‘You are married?’. The teacher then responses regarding the error in question formation by holding fingers each representing a word whilst indicating that two of those need to be repositioned.

5 Silence

After reflecting on my first observed lesson I realised that I haven’t been allowing students enough time to reflect on their own production. So simply saying nothing allows time for self-correction which surely must be the best type of error correction.

 

I indeed to use each of these techniques over the next three days, making note of any relevant findings. Updates will be posted as soon as possible.