Student : İsmayilova Aysel

Group : 319B
Topic :Feedback, mistakes and correction
 Giving supportive feedback.
When our students say or write something, we usually respond in some way to what they have done.
The right kind of formative feedback is one of the greatest contributors to student success, have more
effect on achievement than any other single factor. There are many different ways of responding. We
can, for example, give the students comments either on what they have said or written (the content) or
on the form (how theysaid or wrote it). Sometimes we might respond to what our students say with
praise or encouragement. At other times, when a student makes a mistake, we offer correction.
For praise and encouragement to be really effective it needs not only to be supportive, argues Jim
Scrivener. It should be work-specific: the teacher will explain what it was the student did that was good.
It should be truthful and it should encourage the students to think for themselves
 Students make mistakes
In his book on mistakes and correction, Julian Edge suggested that
we can divide mistakes into three broad categories: 'slips' (that is,
mistakes which the students can correct themselves once the
mistake has been pointed out to them), "errors" (mistakes which
they can't correct themselves - and which, therefore, need
explanation) and 'attempts' (that is, when a student tries to say
something but does not yet know the correct way of saying it)

L1 'interference‘
Developmental errors.
 L1 'interference‘
Many students who learn English as a second language already have a
deep knowledge of at least one other language. Where that L1 and the
variety of English they are learning come into contact with each other,
there are often confusions which provoke errors in a learner's use of
English. This can be at the level of sounds: Arabic, for example, does not
have a phonemic distinction between /f/ and /v/, and Arabic speakers
may well say ferry when they mean very.

Japanese does not use the same system of reference, and so on. It
may, finally, be at the level of word usage, where similar sounding
words have slightly different meanings: libreriain Spanish means
bookshop, not library, embarasada means pregnant, not
embarrassed.
 Developmental errors
For a long time now, researchers in child language developmenthave been aware of
the phenomenon of 'over-generalisation'. This is best described as a situation where a
child (with mother tongue English) who has started by saying Daddy went, they came,
etc. perfectly correctly suddenly starts saying "Daddy goed and "they comed. What
seems to be happening is that the child starts to 'over-generalise' a new rule that has
been (subconsciously) learnt, and, as a result, even makes mistakes with things that
he or she seemed to have known before. Later, however, it all gets sorted out as the
child begins to have a more sophisticated understanding, and he or she goes back to
saying went and came while, at the same time, handling regular past tense endings.
 Correction decisions
When a student makes a mistake, we, as teachers, have to make a number
of decisions. The first of these is to decide whether the mistake itself needs
correcting. If we think it does, our next decision is whether now is the right
time to do it, or whether we should wait till later. Finally, we have to think
about who is the best person to make that correction: the student
themselves, the teacher, or maybe even the student's peers (his or her
classmates).
 What to correct
 When to correct
 Who corrects and who should be corrected?
 What to correct
 When to correct
 Who corrects and who should be corrected?
 What to correct.
Among the many incorrect language features that students can
produce are, for example, grammar mistakes (He go to work
every day), pronunciation mistakes (I don't like eschool),
vocabulary mistakes (I did an error), register mistakes (Give me
the book, teacher - see 2.2) or any combination of these (/
want that you give me the book). When this happens we have
to decide if it is worth pointing out the mistake, and this will
partly depend on whether we think the student has made an
error or a slip.

When students make more than one mistake, we have to decide which of these we
want to focus on. It seems sensible to choose the ones that are either related to the
language point the students are supposed to be working on, or that make the
communication unsuccessful. If we correct every single error that our students make,
there may be very little time for anything else! Furthermore, we want to encourage
our students to activate their language, whether in speaking or writing, and over-
correction may well get in the way of this.
 When to correct

Many teachers make a distinction between accuracy and fluency. In

accuracy work (where the students are studying specific grammar or
vocabulary, for example) the focus is on language forms. This is true
for the presentation stages or for controlled language practice.
Fluency work, on the other hand, is taken to mean the stages in a
lesson where the students are focusing more on the content of what
they are saying, and where they are doing their best to communicate
as effectively as possible.
 Who corrects and who should be corrected?
When students make mistakes, it is often teachers who correct them.
However, we are not the only ones who can do this. In the first place,
students are often capable of correcting themselves once a mistake has been
pointed out, although this may depend on whether they have made a slip or
an error. Students can also be corrected by their peers, if and when they are unable
to correct themselves.
Students can also be corrected by their peers, if and when they are unable to
correct themselves. Sensitivity is required at all stages of correction,
however. Before we start, we have to judge whether a student is in the right
frame of mind to be corrected (either because of their personality or
because of what they are saying), and then we have to adapt our approach
tocorrection, depending on what we judge to be appropriate for that
particular student at thatparticular time.
 What to do about correction

That giving feedback and correcting students is not a simple matter. The variables we
have discussed (of mistakes, activity, student personality, etc.) make it a highly
sophisticated and personal issue. That is why it is so important for us to be constantly
aware of how effective our correction techniques are, and how they are received by
our students. Of all the elements that make up classroom practice. correction is
perhaps the one that most merits teacher reflection and action research. And
because it is so personal, we may well want to ask the students what they feel about
it and what they would like us to do - and to use this information to inform our
teaching behaviour.
 Online (on-the-spot) correction
On-the-spot correction is generally more suited to speaking activities where the focus is on
accuracy.First, we indicate that something isn't quite right. This may be enough to make the student
'think again' and self-correct. Such self-correction often has a greater effect on uptake (the student's
subsequent ability to use the language item correctly) than teacher correction.We can show
incorrectness in a variety of ways. For example, we can say Again? when a student makes a mistake,
and accompany this with a quizzical facial expression (although we need to be careful of expressions
and gestures which might have the potential to offend or make the students feel stupid). The rising
intonation we use will indicate, too, that we are questioning the correctness of what they have said.

Offline (after-the-event) correction

If we decide not to intervene with correction during communicative and fluency
activities - though we may still prompt and participate (see 6.2) - then we will have to do
it afterwards.159chapter 8One of the problems of giving feedback after the event is that
it is easy to forget what students have said. Most teachers, therefore, write down points
they want to refer to later.
 Giving feedback for writing
Many of the issues that we have discussed when talking about giving feedback on student speaking apply to
their written work, too, though there is, perhaps, less of a consensus about the best ways to go about it. For a
start, we have to decide whether to give feedback on the content of what our students have written or whether
it is the form of what they have written (how correct their grammar and spelling is, for example) that should
occupy our interest. In the end, it may depend on whether we are giving feedback on a finished 'product' - in
which case, our feedback may be summative - or as part of a writing process - in which case, it may be formative
(designed to help the students to do better in the future). In a sense, of course, all correction is formative, but
this is especially true of process writing More importantly, and in common with what we have said about
correcting speaking, we must balance the criticism and suggestions we give with appropriate praise, provided
that it is merited and the students know what they are being praised for.
 Giving feedback in process writing.
If our intention during the writing process is to help the students to produce, ultimately. a better final
product, then we may want to think of what we are doing as responding or prompting rather than
correcting. How can this best be done?Process writing involves the students drafting and editing the
writing they do - rather than going straight for a final product in one writing activity. Although not
without its problems getting students involved in the writing process has the best chance of
makingthem better writers in English. Hedy McGarrell and Jeff Verbeem suggest that we should focus
on the student writer's content in their early drafts, demonstrating our enthusiasm and curiosity for
what they are writing because by doing this the teacher 'strengthens the writer's resolve to plunge
back into the tangle of disparate ideas in search of a consistent thread'
What this brief discussion suggests is that when we intervene in the students' writing process, our
principal task (whether we focus on form or content) is to respond to what the students are trying to
say and offer them suggestions about how to say it better. This is very different in both tone and
manner from offering correction on a finished written 'product', as we shall see below.
 Using correction symbols
One of the most popular ways of correcting written work (when it is submitted
on paper) is the use of correction codes to indicate that the students have made
mistakes. These codes can be written into the body of the text itself or in the
margin.

Using correction codes and symbols may not always be effective, however. It is, as
DavidConiam and Rachel Lok Wai Ting put it, an uphill battle: First a major issue is
getting students to appreciate the grammatical concepts underlying the codes. Second is
the eternal question of getting students to pay attention to the error codes written
against their homework in anything more than a very superficial manner“.If students are
to benefit from the use of correction symbols, they first need to know what we mean so
that they can do something about it. This involves training them tounderstand the
process.