Running head: PROVIDING A POSITIVE ERROR CORRECTION

Providing a Positive Error Correction Zakia Alhashem EDAE590 Colorado State University

PROVIDING A POSITIVE ERROR CORRECTION Abstract Error correction is the foremost consideration in the instruction process. It ensures

students comprehension of the subject being taught besides clarifying the correct application for what is taught. Instructors must consider the way to deliver feedback, as well as the timing of the feedback. Both factors play a role in the optimistic or destructive outcome of the error correction. This paper discusses the considerations that need to be undertaken by instructors. In addition, it places more focus on the classification of feedback, immediate versus delayed feedback.

PROVIDING A POSITIVE ERROR CORRECTION Providing Positive Error Correction The factor that manages to provide a successful ESL instruction is the quality of delivering the lectures to students. It is believed that the psychological classroom atmosphere is the foremost factor of a lectures quality. The psychological classroom atmosphere can take several variables such as the physical setting of a classroom, classroom size, and most

importantly the emotional feelings of students. The most common variable that is experienced on a daily basis is the instructors responses and reactions to students mistakes and misunderstandings of the subject or concepts being taught. A mistake is an incorrect utterance that a student usually uses correctly. When a student produces the incorrect utterance many times whether in written form or orally, that is an error not a mistake (Teaching Adults ESL A Practical Introductin, 2004). In this paper, we refer to error correction by the response of an instructor to a student incorrect answer or invalid point of view. Therefore, an ESL instructor must carefully choose the appropriate way and time to respond to students mistakes as it greatly affect the students attitude toward learning a language. The apparent objective of choosing the appropriate way and time is to ensure the correction leads to understanding the misunderstood points of the subject without alienating the students feelings, which could lead to demotivate the student. The significance of instructors responses to students mistakes results in more studying of the possible and best suitable ways for instructors to deal with the explained psychological variable as demonstrated in the remaining of this paper. The efforts being placed to achieve a positive experience in regard to error correction may consider vital aspects such as knowing the audience. The audience is the students. Analyzing students may come into understanding their level of proficiency, confidence, cultural background, and language acquisition stage (Teaching Adults ESL A Practical Introductin,

PROVIDING A POSITIVE ERROR CORRECTION

2004). For instance, an over correction, or explanation, at a high-level of education may provoke students who are at a lower level of education and lead them to consider the hopelessness of learning a language. In addition, students from different cultural backgrounds may differently interpret the way their errors are corrected. This can be observed especially in the middle-eastern cultures, where it is often undesirable to correct someones error publically. Furthermore, students from several cultures may not accept a direct criticism and arguments that are culturalbased. The other aspect is the level of confidence; students who are being corrected on every mistake get discouraged and lose confidence. Instructors should set priorities of the type of errors they may correct. These are important aspects because an excessive of error corrections may build the thought and belief of a student that his (or her) next answers will be wrong. This will eventually stop the student from farther in-class participation as their confidence has declined. Moreover, error correction may cause embarrassment to students in certain situations (Teaching Adults ESL A Practical Introductin, 2004). The type of error corrections that cause embarrassment could be comprehended by analyzing the audiences personality. The instructor may develop another methods to decide whether an error correction may lead to embarrassment. For example, observing the facial expressions of the student and possible all the students of class at the time an error occurred. In the cases when an error correction may cause embarrassment, the instructor could either take one of two approaches. First, delay the correction of the error to a one- on-one meeting with a student; the other way is directing the correction to the whole class. Second, delay the correction of the error and indirectly correct the point that was mistaken by the student. The focus of the instruction and the activity is another point to consider when correcting learners error (Teaching Adults ESL A Practical Introductin, 2004). In most cases, it is

PROVIDING A POSITIVE ERROR CORRECTION advisable to correct every error if the focus of the lesson is accuracy, and to correct later if the focus is fluency, excepts if the error causes a communication breakdown. In addition, an instructor may acquire the best suitable way of error correction directly from students. According to Budden (2010), one way to correct learners error effectively is to ask the learner how he/she would like to be corrected. The instructor could present different ways of error correction to students and converse with them to understand the majority of the

students point of view. For example, some students would like to do self-correction; in this case an immediate correction should take placed through different ways such as clarification request, metalinguistic feedback, elicitation or repetition. On the other hand, students may want to be corrected indirectly and that could be done through recast and delayed correction. In both ways, teachers have to take into consideration the points that they should deem when and how to correct the learners error. In addition, learners have to take responsibility of their own learning process through notice and uptake the correction in the way they choose to be corrected. There are several developed methods of error corrections such as metalinguistic and elicitation correction. According to Lightbown & Spada (2013), metalinguistic feedback is a feedback that contains questions; information and comments related to the correctness of the students utterance while elicitation is the use of some technique to elicit the correct answer from the student. In addition, a combination of metalinguistic feedback and elicitation is the most effective way that results of the learners uptake and that learners tend to correct their error more when using this combination than when using metalinguistic alone (Dastjerdi, 2012). By way of illustration, the combination of metalinguistic and elicitation correction can be applied to a case of a student mispronouncing the word people instead of pupil. In order to proceed to correction, an instructor first indicates that there is a pronunciation error in the students

PROVIDING A POSITIVE ERROR CORRECTION utterance, followed by a time period to allow a student to perceive the error himself. If the student did not recognize the error, an instructor would start the metalinguistic feedback by saying that there is an error in the pronunciation of the word people, and subsequently give time for the student to consider the pronunciation. If a student could not correct the

pronunciation, an instructor would write people and pupil on the board to expose the student into detecting the error visually by trying to pronounce the two words and realize the spelling differences. Lastly, a student may be asked to reformulate his (or her) utterance using the correct pronunciation. The second method of error correction is repetition and asking for clarification. Despite the more fact that repetition is found to be the least favorable way to provide corrective feedback (How Languages are Learned, 2013), I found repetition with intonation that emphasizes the erroneous utterance as a good way to help the students notice the error in a faster manner. An instructor would first repeat the incorrect pronunciation with an intonation that highlights the wrong pronunciation. If that does not result in correcting the pronunciation, an instructor will ask for clarification. For example, if the learner mispronounced the word Febuary instead of February, an instructor will start the feedback by repeating of the wrong pronunciation with intonation or a raise of the eyebrow. According to Parrish (2004), sometimes a raised eyebrow would lead the learner to correct his error. In case the repetition did not cause the student to notice or correct his/her error, an instructor would ask the learner to clarify what did he/she means by Febuary. The student may start saying months in order, or alternatively, may say that February is the second month of the year. Then, an instructor would write the month on the board and tell the learner to read the word aloud. If he/she corrects the pronunciation, an instructor will let the student know that they did it right. If the student does not correct the

PROVIDING A POSITIVE ERROR CORRECTION pronunciation, an instructor will say the word out loud and ask the learner to repeat once or twice, followed by asking the whole class to repeat the correct pronunciation. According to

Lightbown & Spada (2013), in their book (How Languages are Learned, 2013), students uptake after clarification requests occurs more often than after recasts. Although the two pervious ways are considered on the spot correction, they will not be conducted or used with students who choose not to be corrected immediately. According to Budden (2010), students usually appreciate instant corrective feedback. In addition these ways encourage self-correction. Selfcorrection has the advantage of having longer impact than if the teacher corrects the error immediately without engaging the learner in the correction process (Teaching Adults ESL A Practical Introductin, 2004). For the students who prefer delayed corrective feedback, recasts will be used and corrective feedback at the end of the class will be provided. According to Lightbown & Spada (2013), recast is the teachers reformulating action of the learners utterance except the incorrect part and it is considered an implicit feedback. It is the most frequent type used in giving feedback, recast is the least likely method to be noticed by students. Thus, when a student mispronounces a word such as pronouncing here as hair, an instructor will reproduce the sentence with correction of the wrong pronunciation. In addition, one way of giving delayed feedback is through presenting the error in a competition in the class (Thomas, 2011). Since recasts rarely result in students noticing the correction, an instructor will do well to allocate the last 5-10 minutes of the class time for providing corrective feedback through dividing the class into two teams and writing the mispronounced words during the class on the board and give each team a chance to pronounce the word correctly. The instructor may also build a more exciting psychological environment by offering an extra point to the team who pronounces it correctly. In

PROVIDING A POSITIVE ERROR CORRECTION case both teams mispronounce the word, an instructor would provide the correct pronunciation and ask the whole class to repeat the word. Delayed corrective feedback is preferred in the case of oral production than the immediate feedback (Dastjerdi, 2012). This way is a good one because it strengthens the weakness of recast corrective feedback. It attracts the students attention to his or her error without pointing him (or her) out, and it help students correct their own errors. In conclusion, providing a positive error correction is an essential factor in a successful

teaching environment. In contrast, negative error correction may lead to demotivating the student even if it results in students noticing the correction. The instructors may avoid the negative impacts of error correction by understanding the audience, level of confidence, and acquisition stage and the learners culture. In addition, an instructor should consider whether an embarrassment caused by the correction would erase the benefit of correcting the error. It is suggested to involve a student in deciding the preferable way of correcting errors that is to be used in-class in order to ensure highest possible students uptake. The instructor may decide to follow either an immediate or delayed error correction to ensure a positive impact of error correction. An immediate correction through combination of metalinguistic and elicitation feedback and clarification request with repetition. The second one is a delayed correction through recast and represents the errors at the end of the class as a competition. Since students effective filter is believed to be an important factor in the learning process, it is important to provide feedback to the learner without provoking the effective filter of the learner.

PROVIDING A POSITIVE ERROR CORRECTION

References

Budden, J. (2010). Error Correction. Retrieved 11 15, 2013, from British Council: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/language-assistant/teaching-tips/error-correction Dastjerdi, H. V. (2012). Impact of Immediate and Delayed Error Correction on EFL Learner's Oral Production:CAF. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences , 3. Lightbown, P., & Spada, N. (2013). How Languages are Learned. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. Parrish, B. (2004). Teaching Adults ESL A Practical Introductin. New York : McGraw-Hill ESL/ELT . Thomas, S. (2011). Giving Delayed Correction in the ESL Classroom. Retrieved 11 15, 2013, from EFL-resource.com: http://efl-resource.com/giving-delayed-correction-in-the-eslclassroom/ Tsiplakides, I., & Keramida, A. (2010). Promoting Positive Attitudes in ESL/EFL Classes. Retrieved 11 15, 2013, from The Internet TESL Journal: http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Tsiplakides-PositiveAttitudes.html