ROML 7700

Farmer Ford
Fall 2016
Observation #2: Experienced teacher in your language
Due: September 22, 2016

Specific Evaluation: Corrective Feedback Strategies in the Classroom

Name of the Observer: Brian Gravely

Date: 20 September, 2016

Name of the Instructor: Dr. Gary Baker

Course Observed: SPAN 4650

Chapter and topic: Chapter 7; debilitamiento de sonidos

Answer each question below on a separate sheet of paper. Attach this form to
your responses before handing them in. You may not observe a TA, and you
must observe an instructor within your Romance Language (i.e., French,
Spanish, Italian, Portuguese).

1. How would you describe the role of the teacher in this class?
The role of Dr. Baker is one of a leader and discussion catalyst. He informs,
directs, and provokes the needs of the class and its direction.
2. Comment on how the material covered and corrective feedback strategies fit
together as a whole in the lesson from start to finish.
All of the material covered is briefly outlined in a PowerPoint that Dr. Baker has
projected on the whiteboard, but the class discussion is all done verbally. His
briefing of already studied material links with the moments for individual
questions directed toward students. Also, in my experience in his class, his
corrective feedback was very subtle and guiding-like in the different subjectbased discussions with his class.

3. What corrective feedback strategies were used and how?

All of the corrective feedback that I saw was handled by Dr. Baker in a questionself correction manner (i.e., he repeats the students declaration and asks if that
is correction, for said student to realize that he/she has made a mistake and
correct him/herself). One example after a mistake made by a student was along
the lines of:
And is what youve just described X or Y?
Student realizes its not X but Y
Ah, its Y.
Okay, so if that is Y, then what should X be?
As the entire class was one large discussion, excluding the group exercises that
the students performed (only to come back and orally discuss their answers as a
class), this was truly the only way for Dr. Baker to perform any type of
complementary-type correction without fully getting off topic and allowing the
student a chance to redeem him/herself. I, personally, found it to be extremely
useful due to the fact that his class seemed to be so fast-paced.
4. How were these strategies received by the students (e.g., did they notice? did
they correct?).
As Dr. Bakers strategies were on-the-spot corrections and required the student to
correct him/herself immediately, the students both notice their mistake and are
typically able to correct them.
5. Comment on the use of the target language versus English within the corrective
feedback strategies.
Spanish was spoken in every moment of the class (aside from the examples in
English deemed pertinent to the class discussion), so the use of English was not
used at any point during his corrective feedback strategy.
6. What was targeted for correction (e.g., was every little mistake addressed?)?
Why?

Dr. Baker seemed to only focus on content-based mistakes and put aside simple
grammatical and phonological confusions. I assume that due to the advanced
level of the course, not to mention the topic of the class, that simple non-content
based mistakes were not the main focus and would most likely take away from
the main discussions of the class.