Teacher Discussion Forums

Hello All-

I've been reading some very interesting articles by Dr. John Truscott and Dr. Dana Ferris. In Dr. Truscott's papers, he argues that grammar correction is unnecessary and even harmful to language learners. On the other hand, Dr. Ferris admits some forms of grammar correction are unproductive, but as a whole, grammar correction is necessary.

My question is: Have you found grammar correction to be helpful or harmful in your experience? I would love to hear your stories!

Steve Kaufman's blog is often interesting. He had a discussion about this on April 25th (if you scroll down on the link you'll see it).

http://thelinguist.blogs.com/

woodcutter wrote:Steve Kaufman's blog is often interesting. He had a discussion about this on April 25th (if you scroll down on the link you'll see it).

http://thelinguist.blogs.com/

woodcutter- thank you so much for that link. It was quite interesting. It seems that Steve (from thelinguist.blogs.com) believes that grammar correction is good for language learners' writing skills. Truscott would strongly disagree.

Do you think that grammar correction in the context of writing is valuable?

I find that it is hard not to do. I suppose I grew up in the age of correction and a correction just pops out when an error is made without me thinking about it. It depends how you do it of course. I try to encourage the person to go on with the important thought they are trying to convey with a look of anticipation.

Many students ask for correction. I never found it helped though.

When they somehow see their own errors, things seem to change. I get them to leave a 2 inch margin down the side of their paper and go through their writing afterwards to comment. They often get something right but are not confident that it is right so you get that side of the correction as well. The comments focus both of you and you don't have to red pencil every mistake (not that I ever use a red pencil).

Of course correction shouldn't strictly be necessary, but then, it would help if:

-students studied harder than they generally do (I mean by themselves, in their own time, before unleashing their abilities on an "unsuspecting" public)

-methods and materials were better (more comprehensive, exacting, "exhausting" (but exhilarating) etc)

-teachers didn't feel they had to correct so much, and the problems they corrected weren't so trivial on the one hand, or insurmountable (see first two factors) on the other

-those otherwise ordinary but nitpicking members of the public weren't so on the lookout for supposed mistakes, and listened more for meaning than formal correctness

-students didn't overestimate or overstate their abilities [Steve Kaufman perhaps, especially in response to correction/criticism, anybody? I wasn't too impressed with the webcam capture of him acting the native Japanese speaker almost with a fellow foreigner (of clearly less ability). We've probably all jabbered away with fellow learners of a language at some point, but shouldn't you really leave whatever teaching (or even only "teaching") to the Japanese wherever possible, Steve? As it is, you object to people correcting your efforts, but then at least implicitly set standards (and potentially dubious ones at that) for others (fellow learners, no less!) to follow. (Oops sorry, talking more to Steve there, ignore me!)].

It really depends what skill you're teaching. I never correct students when they're interacting or presenting for example. I usually recast the correct form when I teach speaking (even though there's quite a controversy on the effectiveness of recast in SLA). However, grammar correction is critical in a writing course. After all the ultimate goal is accuracy.

R

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Grammar correction is obviously unnecessary, since people learn without it. It can also be harmful to motivation. So any frustrating papers which stress this in order to get talked about are correct.

That doesn't mean that it isn't a short cut to progress though, and only a loon would dispense with it entirely in all circumstances.

I wrote a paper two years ago on recasts. In general the evidence seemed to point to effectiveness, though one odd study I looked at which seemed to set up recasts without focusing attention on them at all did not. The devil is often in the detail, and linguistic research is usually a blunt instrument.

In fact, since linguistic research is so little followed up with studies of a very similar type and uses such small groups, science is far too grand a word for it, even if the people involved in it were really always making honest attempts to find the truth rather than manipulate it in order to further their own purposes. People should not be allowed to crunch numbers in imposing fashion after the shoddy stuff they tend to gather!