Manner of error correction

As for the manner of conducting error correction, the data drawn from questionnaires show that the Chinese EFL student participants in the Chinese EFL context expected their teacher to correct nearly all mistakes in their speech and also preferred that their errors should be corrected appropriately. That is, the Chinese EFL students expected that their teacher’s error correction might not interrupt the flow of their speech.

In this study, some of the Chinese student participants received either implicit correction (recasts) or explicit correction in response to a number of erroneous utterances that contained a grammatical error. This is illustrated in the following error correction episodes between the Chinese EFL teacher participant (T) and a Chinese EFL student participant (S):

Episode 1 (Explicitly):

S: There are apple tree on the farm.

CNT: There are apple trees.

S: Am…There are also many flowers there…

After watching the videotaped lesson, the researcher (R) paused the video and asked the Chinese EFL teacher participant (CNT) --- the teacher who pointed out the error.

154 R: Here, “there are apple tree”. You corrected it to “there are apple trees”. Do

you think the student took notice of this mistake that you’d just pointed out?

CNT: She should.

I: But she didn’t repeat or correct.

CNT: No, she didn’t repeat the correction, as she might then have understood.

Because the story was about a farm, there should be more than one tree. Also it’s quite obvious that [an] article was needed when the noun was in a singular form. Therefore, she should then have realized this when I said ‘apple trees’.

I: So you think she did realize [the mistake]?

CNT: Yes. The way she responded showed that she had realized the mistake.

[CNT, SRI1, p. 2]

Episode 2 (implicitly):

S: There are a lot of river.

CNT: River?

S: A lot of river.

CNT: A lot of river? Ok, go on, please.

The Chinese EFL teacher intended to correct the student’s error implicitly, but the student reacted to the Chinese teacher’s comment by repeating the erroneous form.

This shows that the Chinese EFL teacher had expected to receive correction from the outset, therefore, she was attentive to the feedback, and also her uptake clearly shows that her attention was drawn to the form after the feedback. The data from the SRI with the teacher also show this:

R: Another example here. ‘A lot of river’. This student was not clear [about]

this.

CNT: I reminded her implicitly that ‘river’ was wrong here.

155 R: Did this situation ever happen, in class when you correct implicitly the

students’ oral mistakes in grammar, do they actually still not realize the mistakes they make?

CNT: Yes, it still happens. They, they still make mistakes in grammar and accidents when they speak, e.g. the matching of a subject and its verb, the tense of the verb, etc, probably because they are nervous, sometimes.

R: Even when you have pointed out the mistakes, they still didn’t realize they made them?

CNT: Once the mistakes are pointed out to the students, most of them would realize.

R: You don’t normally ask students to repeat the correct answers, do you?

CNT: Not really…. after I correct their mistakes, some students will repeat the correct answer, some won’t. But I am pretty sure that they know what the correct answer is. Most students make mistake[s] because they are nervous about standing up to talk, not because they don’t know grammatical rules…

That’s right. When they stood up to speak, they make mistakes either because they are not confident enough or because they are nervous.

[CNT, SRI1, p. 2]

I anticipated they’d make these mistakes. So I reminded them, probably a number of students. But some of the students were aware of mistakes made, some weren’t. Or although they were aware of the mistakes, they still made them during the process of speech. That’s how it is.

[CNT, SRI2, p. 6]

The Chinese EFL teacher’s account shows that she expected that her explicit and implicit error correction would have been recognized by her student, even though they did not repeat her correction. The EFL teacher added that such errors were normally made by being nervous. This Chinese EFL teacher participant’s remarks are similar to those of her Chinese EFL students in a stimulated recall interview with the researcher (R).

R: Look at here, when this student said “there are a lot of river”, then immediately your teacher mentioned “river” twice. Did this student notice her mistake after her teacher pointed out twice?

156 CNS4: I think for the second time she did.

CNS1: It is a slip of the tongue. She might not be aware of her error but she could understand what the teacher said.

R: A slip of the tongue. Does this happen very often?

CNS4: Yes, it does.

CNS3: When our teacher just points out our errors, we realize we’ve made an error.

But we seldom repeat the corrections made by our teacher.

CNS5: Yeah, we just continue our speech without repeating the corrections.

[CNS1, 3, 4, 5, SRI1, p. 2]

The findings in the Chinese EFL context show that there is no difference in response to feedback between implicit and explicit corrections. That is to say, both implicit and explicit corrections were not repeated by the Chinese EFL students after their EFL teacher pointed them out. However, both the Chinese EFL teacher and her EFL student participants thought that the EFL students who made the errors realized their errors after being corrected by their teacher. The teacher thought an error was made due to being nervous but the Chinese students regarded it as a slip of the tongue.

However, there are no data from Chinese ESL student participants in the study on the manner of error correction in the Chinese EFL context.