{"id":4795,"date":"2012-12-14T23:28:35","date_gmt":"2012-12-14T23:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eltchat.org\/wordpress\/?p=4795"},"modified":"2012-12-14T23:28:35","modified_gmt":"2012-12-14T23:28:35","slug":"does-feedback-really-help-or-are-mistakes-made-by-learners-fossilised-an-eltchat-summary-17122012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/2012\/12\/14\/does-feedback-really-help-or-are-mistakes-made-by-learners-fossilised-an-eltchat-summary-17122012\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Feedback really help or are mistakes made by learners fossilised? – An #ELTchat summary (17\/12\/2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This summary was contributed by\u00a0Stephen Burrows (@stephenburrows<\/a>) and reposted from his blog<\/a> with his permission.<\/p>\n

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Moderators:\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019m not entirely sure who they were, but I reckon\u00a0@Marisa_C<\/a>,\u00a0@theteacherjames<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0@Shaunwilden<\/a>\u00a0(That’s correct! – James<\/em>)<\/p>\n

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Contributors<\/strong>:\u00a0<\/strong>@antoniaclare @carlaarena @cioccas@David__Boughton @escocesa_madrid\u00a0@hartle @ljp2010 @louisealix68 @MarjorieRosenbe @shaznosel @stephenburrows @steven_odonnell @SueAnnan@teacherthom @TESOL_Assn @vickyloras @Wiktor_K<\/p>\n

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We started with the question by\u00a0@teacherthom<\/a>:\u00a0\u201d<\/strong>what do we mean by fossilised?\u201d<\/strong>@Shaunwilden<\/a>\u00a0suggested it was an error fixed in the student\u2019s head and\u00a0@SueAnnan<\/a>\u00a0suggested it was fixed by practice.<\/p>\n

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@Marisa_C<\/a>\u00a0pondered whether it was easy to get rid of fossilized errors?\u00a0@hartle<\/a>\u00a0suggested with appropriate feedback.\u00a0@cioccas<\/a>\u00a0stated that it wasn\u2019t\u00a0easy, but slowly & with effort (by Ss) it was possible.<\/p>\n

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The important point of\u00a0interlanguage\u00a0<\/strong>and its relation to fossilaztion\u00a0was introduced by\u00a0@Wiktor_K<\/a>and both\u00a0@louisealix68<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0@David__Boughton<\/a>\u00a0highlighted the importance of students becoming aware and noticing their own mistakes.\u00a0@escocesa_madrid<\/a>\u00a0agreed that noticing and self-correcting was key to breaking the onset of fossilization. There was unanimous agreement regarding this observation.<\/p>\n

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@teacherthom<\/a>\u00a0would later come up with the great summary that when an error stops after correction it demonstrates interlanguage. However, when when correction is followed by the repetition of the corrected error over a period of time, we are witnessing fossilisation.<\/p>\n

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@antoniaclare<\/a>\u00a0believed students are aware of their fossilized errors,\u00a0@stephenburrows<\/a>\u00a0would bring this up to and\u00a0@theteacherjames<\/a>\u00a0quipped that the learners are probably just making the errors to annoy their teachers! But\u00a0@David__Boughton<\/a>\u00a0thought that there were fossilized errors learners were aware of, but plenty they weren\u2019t aware of.<\/p>\n

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@theteacherjames<\/a>\u00a0gave a warning shot that dealing with these fozzilised errors can have negative backwash because the students think you\u2019re nagging them and\u00a0@Marisa_C<\/a>\u00a0would later bring up the problem of some teachers pouncing on every error and annoying their students.<\/p>\n

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@escocesa_madrid<\/a>\u00a0suggested writing common errors on the board and@Shaunwilden<\/a>\u00a0suggested recording students to highlight the errors they\u2019re making,\u00a0@cioccas<\/a>\u00a0agreed with this and\u00a0@carlaarena<\/a>\u00a0said she did this and it worked well.\u00a0@louisealix68<\/a>\u00a0suggested learners keep an \u201cerror log\u201d and many contributers commented on the value of this which learners could refer to when undertaking a writing task.\u00a0@escocesa_madrid<\/a>\u00a0said it\u2019s a good idea to make learners aware of what fossilization is.<\/p>\n

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@SueAnnan<\/a>\u00a0brought up the point of fluency v accuracy when correcting errors, she was just happy hearing her learners speaking,\u00a0@cioccas<\/a>\u00a0agreed.\u00a0@antoniaclare<\/a>\u00a0was unsure whether it was worth correcting fixed errors, she said she\u2019d been correcting the same errors her partner makes for 20 years!@Marisa_C<\/a>\u00a0said this is more common with adults than YLs.<\/p>\n

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@stephenburrows<\/a>\u00a0pointed out that he makes errors all the time when writing online, it\u2019s natural.\u00a0@hartle<\/a>\u00a0said we need to separate communication feedback in terms of fluency and accuracy.\u00a0@steven_odonnell<\/a>\u00a0suggested a \u2018bottom up\u2019 strategy, starting with working on the most \u2018fundamental\u2019 errors-those that grate on a native speakers\u2019 ears.\u00a0@Marisa_C<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0@SueAnnan<\/a>\u00a0pointed out pronunciation errors in adults can become easily fossilized and harm communication.<\/p>\n

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@hartle<\/a>\u00a0brought us back to the topic of self-correction, making it memorable and personal.@stephenburrows<\/a>\u00a0suggested that learner errors are a great source of classroom material.@MarjorieRosenbe<\/a>\u00a0said she wrote errors on the board and referred to them in class.\u00a0@antoniaclare<\/a>\u00a0had the nice ideas of writing student errors on separate pieces of paper which she handed them at the end of class.<\/p>\n

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@Marisa_C<\/a>\u00a0was worried that teachers focus too much on grammar errors and@Shaunwilden<\/a>\u00a0said we do this because they\u2019re easier to handle\u00a0@Marisa_C<\/a>\u00a0agreed but suggested they\u2019re also easier to spot.\u00a0@stephenburrows<\/a>\u00a0said that word order errors seemed more productive to pick up on than grammar errors.<\/p>\n

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There were some comments about eye contact, hand movements and so on to correct errors rather than explicit error correction.\u00a0@stephenburrows<\/a>\u00a0pointed out that picking up on errors is a good way of showing that as a teacher you\u2019re paying attention.\u00a0@escocesa_madrid<\/a>\u00a0suggested chants and songs as a good way of dealing with fossilized errors with YLs,\u00a0@Marisa_C<\/a>\u00a0agreed memorable repetition was important.<\/p>\n

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@Marisa_C<\/a>\u00a0moved on to ways of giving feedback and student thoughts on it,\u00a0@louisealix68<\/a>\u00a0believed in peer feedback but\u00a0@David__Boughton<\/a>\u00a0wasn\u2019t a fan because younger students immature and older students want teacher imput, feeling cheated without teacher feedback.\u00a0@shaznosel<\/a>\u00a0thought it was easy to give feedback for writing but more difficult with speaking in big classes.<\/p>\n

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@stephenburrows<\/a>\u00a0suggested \u201cdonut\u201d speaking, where students are in two rings, speaking with various partners repeating tasks while teacher has opportunity to hear all of them and make notes on errors.\u00a0@hartle<\/a>\u00a0suggested error correction at the end of speaking activities to not interfere with communication.<\/p>\n

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Towards the end, the issue of mixing errors with good examples of language was brought up by@hartle<\/a>.\u00a0@steven_odonnell<\/a>\u00a0suggested it\u2019s a good idea to leave out negative words like \u201cmistake\u201d \u201cerror\u201d \u201cproblem\u201d when giving feedback on error correction.\u00a0@theteacherjames<\/a>\u00a0emphasised that feedback was more worthwhile than correction, i.e. \u201ctry this again\u201d not \u201cthat was wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This summary was contributed by\u00a0Stephen Burrows (@stephenburrows) and reposted from his blog with his permission.   Moderators:\u00a0I\u2019m not entirely sure who they were, but I reckon\u00a0@Marisa_C,\u00a0@theteacherjames\u00a0and\u00a0@Shaunwilden\u00a0(That’s correct! – James)   Contributors:\u00a0@antoniaclare @carlaarena @cioccas@David__Boughton @escocesa_madrid\u00a0@hartle @ljp2010 @louisealix68 @MarjorieRosenbe @shaznosel @stephenburrows @steven_odonnell @SueAnnan@teacherthom @TESOL_Assn @vickyloras @Wiktor_K   We started with the question by\u00a0@teacherthom:\u00a0\u201dwhat do we mean by…
Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-summary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}