As usual Penny’s presentation is great food for thought, so it takes some time to process.

As usual Penny’s presentation is great food for thought, so it takes some time to process.
I have always felt that correcting is better than not correcting. Something about the lack of feedback doesn’t sit well with me both as a teacher and as a learner. I believe that production without feedback is like shouting into the void – a bit upsetting and not really useful.
As for types of correction, recast has seemed to me a bit too superficial, so I generally ask for clarification (and I also think it is quite a natural way of correcting) and use metalinguistic feedback. Truth be told, it was nice to be proven right :) But these are the ways I use when I decide to interrupt the student during fluent speech. If I opt out, then I take notes both of errors and good language (so when my students see me writing down something, they don’t think they are doing something wrong). At the end of the activity I start (and finish) with some positive feedback and then I invite the student to correct their own errors. Sometimes I put the sentences on the board, sometimes I read them out, sometimes I give them as part of homework to correct themselves. At the end of the day I believe it is important to be consistent and persistent when dealing with errors. Just as Penny said.

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