By bringing up the “garden path” technique I have moved from discussing which errors to correct to which techniques to use. In actual fact, a great vari
ety of feedback techniques exists. For instance, Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) offer a thirteen-point scale of feedback practices, from more implicit techniques to more explicit ones. At the implicit end of the scale, students are asked to find their errors in an essay they have written and to correct the errors on their own.
Toward the middle of the scale, the nature of the error is identified for the stu
dent using explicit direct negative feedback of a metalinguistic nature (e.g.,
“There is something wrong with the tense marking here”) but it is left up to the student to identify the precise error and to correct it. At the explicit end of the scale, when other forms of help fail to produce an appropriate action, the learn
er is given an explanation for the use of the correct form and, if needed, exam
ples of the correct form.
It is often assumed that self-correction is best because, when learners do their own correcting, they are more likely to remember it. Then, too, simply telling stu
dents what is wrong or giving them the correct answer does not teach students to correct themselves. In general, many teachers and teaching methodologists suggest abiding by conversational maxims that favor self-repair over other-repair.
A variety of techniques have been proposed to help learners identify the prob
lem in what they have said and to self-correct, such as various forms of repeti
tion and elicitation (echoaic, echoaic with rising intonation, echoaic stressing the trouble spot, etc.). Schachter (1986) suggests that even such indirect means of negative feedback as signaling a failure to understand can be helpful to learn
ers. However, favoring self-correction does not mean that teachers should always be so indirect.
I think there is a place ... for leading students to a situation where they perceive that they need this knowledge and want this knowledge, and trying to lead them to an awareness of it themselves, and providing the knowledge if they can’t get to it themselves (A teacher in Borg, 1998: 2 2 -2 3 ).
When it is necessary for a teacher to provide explicit feedback, it is impor
tant to let students know that the corrections are offered as help, not criticism.
To this end, it is sometimes pointed out that teachers should highlight not only what is wrong, but what is right in what their students say or write as well.
10.4
Here is a short piece o f writing produced by a male intermediate ESL student, a native speaker o f Arabic. What would you tell a student to correct here? What would you tell the student is right?
I saw a movie about a man in a city (big city). I want to tell you what I saw
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and what is my opinion. The movie began with a man about forty years old, in his apartment in a big city. He was disturbed by many things like Alarm O’Clock, T.V., Radio and noisy outside. He want a fresh air, but he could not because the city is not a good place for fresh air. There are many factories which fill the air with smoke. The movie showed the daily life of a man in the city. He is very busy day and night. He had to go to his work early by any means of transportation, car, bus, bicycle. The streets are crowded, every
thing in the city is crowded with people, the houses, streets, factories, insti
tutions, even the seashores...
(Data from Selinker and Gass, 1984)
Of course, the teacher is not the only purveyor of feedback. Students can learn a great deal from their peers. Here is an example of peer correction given to French learner SI by learner S2 (Swain, 1998: 78):
SI: La nuit derniere je marchais dans un long passage etroit.
(Last night I was walking in a long narrow passage.) S2: Non, etroite.
(No, narrow [feminine form].) SI: Avec un “e” ?
(With an “e l ) S2: Oui.
(Yes.)
A lot of attention in the second language acquisition literature has been given to a feedback strategy known as a recast. Perhaps the most widespread of all teacher responses to learner errors, recasting involves teachers reformulating all or part of what a student has just said so that it is correct. For example:
Teacher: What did you do this weekend?
Student: I have gone to the movies.
Teacher: Oh. You went to the movies last night. What did you see?
Han (in press) suggests that the most successful recasts are ones where students receive individual attention, where recasts deal with a consistent focus— for exam
ple, for a period of time, all recasts might deal with verb tense usage— where it appears that learners are developmentally ready to benefit from the evidence pro
vided by recasts, and when there is a certain level of intensity to the recasts, there
by heightening their frequency and saliency. However, the “success” of a recast cannot be determined by an immediate change in learner performance alone. For one thing, the learning process is nonlinear, and so a shift in performance may not immediately follow the recast. For another, the learner may find the recast useful for his or her own purposes, such as its use in private speech rehearsal, again with
no immediate concomitant change in performance (Ohta, 2000).
Of course no technique— even giving the student the correct form, as the teacher in the example did with the past tense of go— is effective unless the stu
dent can perceive the difference between the recast and what he or she has just said. It would seem necessary, therefore, that students notice the gap between what they are producing and what the target language demands at that point.
The same could be said for the teacher’s efforts at correction. Indeed, Nicholas, Lightbown, and Spada (2001), in their review of the research literature on recasts, concluded that recasts are most effective when they are not ambiguous, that is, when learners perceive that the recast is in reaction to the form, not the content, of what they have just said. Otherwise, there could be a mismatch between the teacher’s intent and the learner’s perception of it. Han (2002:
2 4 -2 5 ) recognizes the need for fine-tuning, for achieving
1) congruence between a teacher’s intention and a student’s interpretation, and 2) between a teacher’s correction and a stu
dent’s readiness for it.... In tuning feedback to learning problems, it seems important that a teacher has a range of strategies readily available so as to be able to adopt one that is most fitting to the targeted problem as well as to the ongoing dynamics of the communicative activities.
In other words, it is unlikely that there is one feedback strategy that is better than others for all occasions. Instead, teachers need to develop a repertoire of techniques that can be deployed as appropriate. Effective use of strategies results when teachers adapt their practice to their students’ learning. Thus, error cor
rection ultimately comes down to adjusting feedback to the individual learner.
Adjustments cannot be determined a priori; rather, they must be collaborative- ly negotiated on-line with the learner. As Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) explain, from a sociocultural or Vygotskyan perspective, learning takes place when there is a bridge between the dialogic activity, collaboratively constructed by the teacher and the student, and the student’s internal mental functioning. Here is an example from their study (page 477) illustrating this point. The student (S) is going over an essay she has written with her teacher (T):
T: We can see a grey big layers in the sky with a dense smog. What is...do you see anything wrong here?
S: Dense smog with ah heavy or...
T; That’s fine, yeah this is good S: This is good?
T: But what do you see wrong in these sentences...
S: Ah just a moment. “We can...see we can...we can...see T: Uhum
S: It...grey
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T: Okay S: Big
T; Okay, grey big S: Layers
T: Layers
S: Layers in the sky T: Uhum
S: Because is no one only, is all...
T: Layers, it is not singular. Right, that’s good.
S: Grey big layers...yes (laughs) T: In the sky
S: With dense T: Okay S: (laughs)
T: Dense, that’s good S: Dense smoke T: With dense smog
S: Produced by carbon monoxide of the vehicle.
Aljaafreh and Lantolf note that:
the learner is immediately able to correct her misuse of the indefinite article with the mass noun “smog” in line 1. Of even more interest is what we observe in lines 6 and 7, where the learner overtly interrupts the tutor’s utterance and subsequently inhibits his attempt to offer assistance. In so doing, she assumes fuller responsibility for finding and correcting the error in “a grey big layers.” (1994: 477)
Much of what has been written in this section conforms to the traditional view that learning grammar means learning formal accuracy. In this book, though, I have challenged this notion and explained that, for me, learning grammar is also learning to use grammar structures meaningfully and appropriately. As such, any feedback techniques that are used not only have to be appropriate, they have to be appropriately focused.
10.5
To drive this point home, consider the following English learner statements.
Each contains an error (although you undoubtedly will find some more obvious than others). Can you sort them into the categories o f form, meaning, and use?
1. A: I like math.
B: Really? I am boring in math class.
2. Please explain me the answer.
3. Our company has a lot of people.
4. Please extinguish your cigarette here. This is a non-smoking area.
5. The cocoa tasted good. It was too hot.
6. Give the person sitting at the end of the table the salt.