Understanding Errors, Correction, and Feedback
Hello everybody. First, we are going to start with a short video.
This is a fun episode of The Simpsons in which Homer puts on a pair of glasses that he finds in the bathroom. He looks in the mirror and repeats some words. It sounds like Homer is trying to recite the Pythagorean Theorem, but someone offscreen tries to correct him, saying, “That’s a right triangle, you idiot!” with no constructive feedback at all!
Okay, I have shown you this video because I am going to talk about “Feedback, Mistakes, and Correction” (Chapter 8).
Types of Mistakes
Let’s start with mistakes. According to Julian Edge, we can divide mistakes into three categories:
- Slips: Mistakes that students can correct themselves once the mistake has been pointed out.
- Errors: Reflect gaps in a student’s knowledge. They occur because students don’t know what is correct. Therefore, students can’t correct themselves. That’s why they need explanation and intervention from the teacher.
- Attempts: The student tries to say something, but he or she doesn’t yet know the correct way of saying it.
Sources of Errors and Mistakes
In order to analyze errors and mistakes, it is very important to find the causes/sources of errors and mistakes. There are two sources:
- L1 Interference: The interference of the mother tongue. In other words, L1 and the variety of English students are learning come into contact with each other, and there are often confusions which provoke errors in a learner’s use of English.
It can operate at the level of sounds. For example, Arabic speakers sometimes say ferry when they want to say very because Arabic doesn’t have a phonemic distinction between /f/ and /v/. It can also operate at the level of grammar. For example, French students often have trouble with the present perfect because there is a similar form in French. Finally, L1 interference can operate at the level of word usage; this means similar-sounding words have slightly different meanings, most commonly known as false friends. For example, embarazada in Spanish means pregnant, not embarrassed.
On the other hand, we have developmental errors. Errors of this kind are part of a natural acquisition process. For example, “She is more nicer than.” Here, the acquisition of more for comparatives is over-generalized and then mixed up with the rule that the student has learned (adjective + -er). I think all of us present here have gone through this overgeneralization process.
Correction Techniques
Let’s move on to corrections. When a student makes a mistake, we should offer correction. These are techniques/ways of showing incorrectness in fluency work:
- Repeating: We can say “again, please?” when a student makes a mistake.
- Reformulation: We can repeat what the student has said correctly without making a big issue of it.
- Echoing: That is to say, repeat what the student has said, emphasizing the part of the utterance that was wrong.
- Statement and question: We can say that something is not right and ask if the student can try it again.
- Expression: This is a very good technique if we know our group of students well. For instance, we can make a facial expression or a gesture to indicate that something is wrong.
- Hinting: For example, we can say the word “tense” to make them think about the correct tense.
Feedback
Finally, feedback. We have to make instant decisions about what kind of feedback we should give when we see or hear our student’s work. So, we usually respond in some way to what they have done. There are different ways of responding: for instance, we can give students comments on the content or on the form, or we can respond with praise or encouragement.
I hope you have found this presentation interesting or useful. It seems that teachers have a lot of very hard work ahead in terms of spotting mistakes, correcting them, and giving feedback, but don’t worry. If you need motivation, I know you were waiting for him. That’s all, thanks!