Correcting

[rouen_teacher]

Hi all. First post here. What a wonderful place. Cheap wine too

Question from a course of mine, and I'm stumped at the answer. I think the question is not valid:

"The teacher shakes his/her head or says ‘No’ and asks the student to repeat the sentence or phrase. This lets the whole class know that the student has made a mistake, but doesn’t indicate where the mistake occurred. Therefore the student has to think back over the sentence and try to find where the mistake is. A useful technique, the teacher needs to have rapport developed with the group. However under what circumstances might this form of correction not be appropriate?"

Help would be much appreciated!

Kind regards, Dan.

[lolwhites]

It seems to me that the most obvious answer is contained in the question - don't do it unless you have a good rapport with the group. I'd be extremely wary of using this method unless I knew the students really well otherwise it might seem condescending. If I had a student who I knew would resent being shown up, I wouldn't do it either.

Peer correction is a great tool but as a rule I keep such mistakes anonymous unless the group know each other really well and the atmosphere is mutually supportive. If there are any rivalries or overly self conscious students, I'd avoid getting their peers to publicly correct them.

[joshua2004]

I don't do very much correcting, if any; the focus is on the message. If I can't understand what someone is trying to tell me, I might offer some suggestions to understand the meaning: "do you mean ......" The thing is, correction doesn't actually teach them anything. They might remember your correction on the short term, if you beat it into them enough (or they beat it into themselves enough), but on the long term or when actual conversation is happening, it's out the door. Acquired language, language learned by listening/reading and understanding, is qualitatively different from "learned" language, as defined by Stephen Krashen. If you work in a program that emphasizes grammar, this could be imposible. You might have to do correction to make the learning stick. How long is sticks or how useful it is, is limited.

[Tara B]

The thing is, correction doesn't actually teach them anything.

I would definitely take issue with this, first of all because of my own personal experience learning languages. There were times in my Spanish classes when a certain vocabulary word or turn of phrase was burned into my mind because the teacher had the gall to correct me in the middle of the conversation. But then, perhaps this worked because of my personality--I had a strong motivation to be right, but was resilient enough that I didn't shut down when I had made a mistake. Most of these cases happened in one-on-one situations, though, and not in front of the whole class.

There are many methods of error correction, including giving the student the correct alternative, giving the alternative AND making them say it over right, (the one you mentioned) indicating that there's something wrong and making the student correct him/herself, or simply asking for clarification only when you really don't understand them. These methods have been studied, so there is no reason not to base your teaching on hard and fast research. From what I remember, the most successful method was the one you just described.

However, that method assumes that the students already know the correct way to say it, and that they are just not applying their knowledge. (Be very conservative when correcting beginners.) If they really don't know, you can wait until the cows come home, but they will never come up with the correct form. I try to hold my students accountable only for things that I have taught them. This should be common sense.

Being familiar with the order of acquisition for certain grammatical structures (Krashen has also done some research on this), will help you know what it is appropriate (and useful) to correct, and what is not. But beware: this order is not necessarily the same as the order they are presented in the textbooks.

Peer correction is a great tool

I have found just the opposite. In my experience, when students correct each other, they are impatient and overly critical. And, unlike the teacher, they have no concept of the order of acquisition or different correction methods.

[joshua2004]

perhaps your right that corrrection isn't all bad, I suppose I was feeling a little over zealous. Most teachers everywhere focus so much attention on correcting that I sometimes feel the need to go to the opposite extreme.
However, I do stand by the postition that correcting is extremely limited. And that correcting is only done to verify or to further communication. If a student says something to me which I understand but she/he said it incorrectly, I will not correct. If something is said that is unclear or there is doubt to the meaning of what was said, then I will ask or look for clarification. "did you mean...?"

Thanks for your response.

[Tara B]

What about preparing the students go into the outside world? As you know, ESL teachers develop a sixth sense when it comes to decoding foreigner speech. (It's like talking to your friend's two-year-old. To you it sounds like babble, but your friend can understand them. Why does the child eventually alter its language? By coming into contact with you, who really don't understand it. In some ways, we ESL teachers lose our effectiveness the better we get at understanding this speech.) A lot of the things we understand would not be comprehensible to a native English speaker, simply because they're taken off-guard by some creative grammar or pronunciation. Of course, we cannot correct everything, and we should not correct anything that the student is not ready to learn and retain.

There is also the problem of when I understand a student, but the other students in the class don't understand them. That happens a lot in my classes. We'll be having a discussion, and I'm standing in front, listening, nodding, and all the other students are going to sleep because they can't understand. What do you do in that case?

And then, error correction in speaking is a different world than error correction in writing. While many teachers would agree with you that the "packaging" is not important as long as the message gets through, in writing that "packaging" is of utmost importance. And, if we must be picky in writing (and I think we must), it seems to me that we might as well reinforce those things across the board. Always respecting what the research tells us about order of acquisition, of course, and making sure that our corrections are developmentally appropriate.

[joshua2004]

What about preparing the students go into the outside world? As you know, ESL teachers develop a sixth sense when it comes to decoding foreigner speech. (It's like talking to your friend's two-year-old. To you it sounds like babble, but your friend can understand them. Why does the child eventually alter its language? By coming into contact with you, who really don't understand it. In some ways, we ESL teachers lose our effectiveness the better we get at understanding this speech.)

Stephen Krashen also found that the best communication to learn by is what he calls "caregiver speech". Essentially he found that the "buubuu you good baby??" speech is more comprehensible for really young people and thus they acquired more. The same principle works for adults. If you talk to them so that they can understand, they will correct themselves as they begin to hear and read more.
I am not saying you talk baby talk all the time or anything. The research showed that "caregiver speech" is actually sophisticated in that provides comprehensible input but at the same time provides a certain (but attainable) level of new speech which helps the learner improve.

As far as the group discussion where one student asks something and noone else is understanding, I would translate for them or ask someone who speaks their language to translate, so that she/he can follow along.

[strider]

Hello everyone, interesting discussion!

As you know, ESL teachers develop a sixth sense when it comes to decoding foreigner speech.... In some ways, we ESL teachers lose our effectiveness the better we get at understanding this speech

I agree with this - I find that when I hear mistakes so many times I begin to ask myself if it really is a mistake.

Regarding correction, I think another factor which can confuse the issue is students expectations. Some of my adult students expect me to correct them all the time because in their experience, that's what teachers do. They will even pause and look at me, waiting for the inevitable (and probably reproachful) corrections. However, I tend to reserve corrections for situations where their mistake could result in a problem of communication. For example, if they say 'I will meet you on Tuesday last week in the hotel', I would correct the word 'last' because the word should be 'next' but I wouldn't correct 'in' if the correct word should be 'at'.

Particularly for adult students, part of our job should be to promote student autonomy. If they are constantly corrected, they will always feel like they are making mistakes when they speak.

[lolwhites]

Are you saying you find at the hotel preferable to in the hotel? Apart from the fact that the latter could not be said of someone who was just outside the hotel, I don't see any reason to favour one over the other.

[lolwhites]

Are you saying you find at the hotel preferable to in the hotel? Apart from the fact that the latter could not be said of someone who was just outside the hotel, I don't see any reason to favour one over the other.

[Lorikeet]

Hello everyone, interesting discussion!

As you know, ESL teachers develop a sixth sense when it comes to decoding foreigner speech.... In some ways, we ESL teachers lose our effectiveness the better we get at understanding this speech

I agree with this - I find that when I hear mistakes so many times I begin to ask myself if it really is a mistake.

Yes, I agree! Aside from my students' use of "Teacher" to call me (Sorry, I gave up correcting that years ago.), the one I have trouble with is "happen with" as in "What happened with his dog?" I think it should be "What happened to his dog?" but the more I teach the more normal the first one sounds. However, my family is still voting for "to" so that's the one I teach.

[Tara B]

joshua--You have given me some food for thought. I didn't know that about caregiver speech, but it makes sense. However, I have my doubts about this:

If you talk to them so that they can understand, they will correct themselves as they begin to hear and read more.

This is the monitor hypothesis, right? I know that language acquisition works this way with kids, but it just doesn't match my experience with adults. Some students definitely do this-- but the ability to correct onesself seems to be part of an individual's aptitude for language, not something we can take for granted. Most adult brains just doesn't seem to work that way.

Maybe it's one of my follies as a relatively young teacher, this stubborn clinging to form. I would definitely grant you that most teaching programs go about it the wrong way--introducing concepts too soon and not giving enough chances to practice. I have heard that the best time to introduce a grammar skill is when the students are already using it correctly 50% of the time. (If anybody knows where this comes from--I would like to be able to site it. . .) (And, how that would work in an EFL classroom, I don't know. . .) But the 50% rule poses yet another problem, since every student in your class is going to reach this point at a different time.

[Sally Olsen]

I have been lucky enough to be able to request that the students use my first name in all the schools that I taught and used to answer, "Teacher?" with "Student?". They would laugh and switch to my name.
My family always complained that I came home from an assignment speaking Jane/Tarzan English after a year away. It seemed to be a combination of trying to learn the language of the country and trying to make things easy to understand for non-English speakers. They also said that I spoke slowly and gradually increased to a more "normal" speed. I think it is also called "Teacher English"
I find myself correcting by recasting what the student said in a more "natural" way and do it without thinking. I also fill in words or the end of sentences when the students falter. I am concentrating on understanding though so most students don't pause long in their attempts to communicate. I guess it is an attitude of interest and appreciation of the ideas expressed rather than the attitude of an English teacher correcting so they can cope in the real world. I think the best thing we can teach students is that there is an acquistion order and they shouldn't expect to be perfect but enjoy their growth. To this end, you can tape them often and let them listen a month or so later and correct their own mistakes.
I think that the latest research is beginning to show that students do much better when they think the teacher is supportive and encouraging and finds their strengths. How about concentrating on positive statements for what they do right and ignoring the errors as much as you can?

[joshua2004]

I find myself correcting by recasting what the student said in a more "natural" way and do it without thinking. I also fill in words or the end of sentences when the students falter.

This is exactly what is meant by caregiver speech; excellent!

I have my doubts about this:

Joshua2004 wrote:
If you talk to them so that they can understand, they will correct themselves as they begin to hear and read more.

Sorry I wasn't very clear there. I was also really tired, but thats another story. What I meant to say was sumed up very nicely by Sally Olsen.

I think that the latest research is beginning to show that students do much better when they think the teacher is supportive and encouraging and finds their strengths. How about concentrating on positive statements for what they do right and ignoring the errors as much as you can?

[rouen_teacher]

Hi. Back again. I see I got a good thread going. Very interesting replies..Thanks And happy correcting!