As a rule, students always expect feedback from the teacher on their performance. Whether positive or negative, feedback is crucial to the student’s future development and attitude toward the learning process. According to Nunan, behaviorist-inspired research has emphasized the effectiveness of positive feedback in comparison with negative one: “Positive feedback has two principal functions: to let students know that they have performed correctly and to increase motivation through praise.” (1991: 195) However, this should not be delivered automatically for positive feedback to be effective. On the contrary, it requires previous planning to focus on the particular accomplishments of different students, raising their confidence that they can perform at their best. In addition, teachers should set up rewards in tune with specific performance criteria, and the teacher should make sure that the students understand that success is closely related to hard work, perseverance, and learning from failure.
Interpreted as a form of positive feedback, error correction plays a pivotal role in student learning. It allows students to learn through ‘trial and error’, thereby improving their performance in the future. As Scrivener (2011: 285) puts it, ‘Errors often show us that a student is experimenting with language, trying out ideas, taking risks, attempting to communicate, making progress.’ This analysis of errors not only clarifies the student’s current level but also guides future language work. Without error correction, students are more likely to repeat the same mistakes, unaware that they are on the wrong path and building a false sense of confidence.
First, teachers must decide what error has been made (pronunciation, grammatical, vocabulary-related, etc.). Secondly, they have to analyze whether it is helpful to correct it on the spot, later during the activity, or at the very end of the lesson. Thirdly, it is also important to consider who will correct the respective error. From this perspective, there are more possibilities: teacher correction, student self-correction, or correction made by other students. Last but not least, teachers should consider which technique to use to highlight the fact that an error has occurred and to enable students to correct it.
Awareness of the error and avoiding it in the future are the two main goals of the entire process. Some methodologists also take into account the bigger picture: “Sometimes the goal may be wider: to use one student’s mistake as a basis for teaching the whole class a tricky language point, and thus to anticipate and possibly prevent similar mistakes by others.” (Ur 2012: 89) Classroom experience has proved that the effectiveness of error correction is far from producing instantaneous results. More often than not, students seem to understand their mistakes when the teacher points them out but do not cease to repeat them during the following classes. Such behavior does not necessarily imply that error correction has no consequences; it takes time for the students to internalize the teacher’s correction and change how they think and use the second language. On the same wavelength, Pawlak has done some extensive research in the field of error correction, ultimately pinpointing the importance of planning in such a process: “[…] corrective feedback constitutes an important option in form-focused instruction and, therefore, its target, timing, manner, and sources should be informed by and geared to the objectives of the activity in hand, a particular lesson, a sequence of such lessons and the entire curriculum, rather than be determined on the spur of the moment with little consideration to previous and future teaching.” (2014: 247) Both oral and written correction are valuable tools teachers could use to foster students’ language competence. Suppose they manage to keep in mind the aims of the learning process and draw the students’ attention to form without disturbing the communicative process. In that case, error correction will become an inherent part of the lesson. The teacher’s willingness to change and adapt to each student’s needs will correlate with the requirements of different types of activities.
In classroom practice, students are more likely to respond to error correction when the teacher does not abuse their position of authority and the whole process is not humiliating or demoralizing. Praising the students and focusing on what they have done right help them move forward and feel that the teacher is there to guide and support them throughout the learning process. Depending on the student, different types of error correction are effective. Nevertheless, most expect the teachers to correct their errors because they perceive them as poles of authority in the classroom; therefore, they will be more willing to accept their mistakes if the correction comes from the teacher rather than a colleague. The most essential aspect teachers need to understand is that error correction is not equal to negative feedback but mandatory feedback with positive connotations for the students.
References
1. Nunan, David (1991) Language Teaching Methodology: A Textbook for Teachers. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
2. Pawlak, Miraslaw (2014) Error Correction in the Foreign Language Classroom. Reconsidering the Issues. Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London: Springer.
3. Scrivener, Jim (2019) Learning Teaching. The Essential Guide to English Language Teaching. London: Macmillan Education.
4. Ur, Penny (2012) A Course in English Language Teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press.