For error correction I tend to use the most frequent type of correction, recast. I believe I use it because it's quick and doesn't harm fluency and communication entirely. But like Penny Ur mentioned, this type of correction all the time may be ineffective and may I add fall on deaf ears most of the times. Research shows that the best correction methods are elicitation, metalinguistic feedback and explicit correction so I feel I need to use more of these methods when correcting my students. Also, sometimes I let errors go by uncorrected mostly because I consider them minor or unimportant errors but there are times when students notice them and correct them. Perhaps it's best the teacher corrects all errors and not the students because it could come across as if the teacher wasn't listening or doesn't care and because learners would rather be corrected by the their teacher than their peers as research shows.
The question is:how much you felt they learned from doing it this way, as opposed to doing it the normal way?
ReplyDeleteJust to clarify: I'm not in favour of doing it this way every time: it's just a variation which is useful sometimes.
A compromise you might try: tell them to do all the ones they're sure they can do right, and then show them the answers to check and find out answers to the ones they couldn't do.
It's great to hear so many people trying out Penny's tips!
ReplyDeletethe task was about writing the correct forms. It was an opportunity to go through the rules to justify the answer. I think that following this technique helped them to realize which form should be used (adjective, verb, noun...). In the normal way of doing such task, they will be reluctant and not very much interested. they seemed to be engaged.
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