November 10th reflection of reading

Corrective feedback in the classroom

I focused on error correction in our multi-genre, so I will write findings of our multi-genre.
First, we learned that the attitude against error correction is shifted dramatically. Compared to now and past, the attitude is totally different. From the traditional point of view, mistakes are a revelation of students’ ignorance, laziness and lack of commitment and mistakes should be highly avoided. Therefore, a perfect lesson should be mistake-free. From the communicative point of view, mistakes show that students are experimenting with the language, trying to formulate sentences and responses for themselves, and are an inevitable and natural part of the learning process. Therefore, a perfect lesson is one full of student mistakes and students correcting themselves and each other.
Second, we learned that what kinds of errors should be corrected. When the teachers think about comprehensibility of learners, they should correct errors that cause a misunderstanding or lack of intelligibility. If the errors that are constantly made by an individual student or the entire class, that errors should be given priority and be corrected. Then, errors in form that students have recently learned in class should be corrected. In addition, teachers have to correct learners’ errors according to students’ proficiency levels, needs and personal preferences.
Third, we learned that errors are not only corrected by teachers but also corrected by others. There are mainly three types of correction in language classroom. Self-correction: students correct themselves. Peer-correction: students correct each other. Teacher-correction: Teacher corrects students’ errors.
Fourth, we learned that how to treat errors. There are techniques of direct and indirect corrections. The direct correction is that teacher stops the student, points out mistake, gets student to self-correct or be corrected by another student. On the other hand, indirect correction is that teacher takes notes of mistakes and deals with correction at a later time.
Fifth, error correction can have positive and negative effects on students’ language learning because most students, especially teenager and adults have high self-esteem and they are very sensitive toward mistakes. On the one hand, positive effects have students become fully aware of their area of problems and work toward solving it and become more open and tolerant of their own mistakes and those of their classmates and they are willing to try out new language items and consider teacher correction as useful guided helps. On the other hand, negative effects have students be afraid of being criticized and play it safe by not trying to produce the language anymore, become critical of their own mistakes and those of their friends, and feel frustrated and insecure during class periods.