Teacher Discussion Forums

Does anyone have any good suggestions for feedback to student errors besides recasts. I would love some ideas that have been effective with your students.

Sorry, what is a recast?

I like to use a lot of different methods of error correction with my students, but it really depends on what level the students are, what age they happen to be, and their personalities. When I was teaching a multi-cultural group of young adults in Vancouver, a lot of the students from Europe wanted more error correction, while some of my students from the Middle East would get very hostile if the teacher corrected them, and a few of the girls from Japan would cry.

Now that I am in Japan, I tend not to single anyone out for correction, but will listen to students while they are doing an activity, and then stop the class for a moment to show some common mistakes on the board. This keeps anyone from getting embarrassed. I also get my students to monitor eachother for common mistakes as we go through a group work exercise or are working in pairs. They respond very well to this, and it really does work.

For presentations, written papers, and interview tests, I like to make up a rubrick score card, and then supplement that with comments of specific errors.