Teachers of corrective feedback communication

Essay代写范文:“Teachers of corrective feedback communication”，这篇论文主要描述的是课堂教学主要由听力、阅读和口语教学组成，随着交际语言教学部分的提高，传统的交际法教学也就迎来了新的挑战，教师如何在教科课堂教学中将纠正性反馈真实合理的运用，这是一个非常棘手的问题。

With the increased focus on communicative language teaching (CLT), the pedagogical challenges of communicative methodologies have aroused a heated debate. One of these challenges is that how to operate real-life situations in classrooms. A mirror of this challenge is how to make teacher talk especially corrective feedback authentic in communicative classrooms (Cullen, 1998). However, this thorny problem is not impossible to be resolved. The remaining issue is to find an appropriate way to cope with it. The aim of the paper is to explore the communicativeness in teacher corrective feedback. It begins with a review of literature arguing the definition, types, communicative values and challenges of corrective feedback. Detailed analysis on the examples eliciting from observations are presented in the following section. 

Literature review 文献

Giving feedback is an integral part in language teaching. As Franselow says (1987: 267), ‘to teach is to provide feedback’. There are two types of feedback-positive feedback and negative feedback. Negative feedback is an essential part of feedback, when something goes wrong. Many researchers (Harmer, 2007; Nunnan 1991) found that most students expect to be corrected when they produce mistakes. It is universally acknowledged that teacher talk is one of criterions to judge communicativeness in classroom (Cullen, 1998). As a kind of teacher talk, the communicativeness in corrective feedback is of worth being evaluated as well.  

When right answers are given, teachers have different responses as well. Although most researchers concentrate on corrective feedback, it is also of worth considering positive feedback in language teaching. Teachers often react to students’ right answers with ‘Very good’, ‘ Exactly’, ‘Absolutely’ and so on. These praising positive feedbacks can help students reinforce the given right language points and thus give learners a sense of achievement and make them confident in the following study, which is the vital function of positive feedback (Harmer, 2007).  Negative feedback is a common feedback on students’ performance in language classroom. Harmer (2007) highlights that there are two stages in teacher correction. Teachers should first indicate an error and then help students deal with it. However, he solely emphasizes on teachers’ function in this process without predicting influence on learners. This was developed by Gainer (1989), who defines teacher correction as identifying students’ errors and strengthening linguistic rules in their minds. It can help students produce more accurately. In fact, his research did not mention the situation that teacher corrective feedback may be more or less powerless as repeated errors arise. Then, Allwright and Bailey (1991) notice such limitation and try to avoid using ‘correction’ as a reaction towards learners’ errors, as it means a permanent cure. Instead, he believes that teacher treatment of error facilitates learners’ target language form and function acquisition. After that, Cullen (1998) highlights the communicativeness in teacher response to mistakes. In his paper, teacher correction is seen as a part of teacher talk, which is related closely classroom contexts. Moreover, Samar and 

Shyestefar (2009) clarify that negative feedback helps learners ‘notice the gap between their non-target forms and the target forms’. From their point of view, teacher corrective feedback can also be treated as a way to communicate with learners and ‘bridge the communication breakdown’. Thus, teachers respond not only form but also content errors and this corrective feedback has multiple functions including helping learners’ target language acquisition as well as keeping the flow of communication in class.  As one of the goals of negative feedback is to ‘help learners get closer and closer to target language norm’ (Allwright and Bailey, 1991), teachers should choose the most appropriate correction aspect, moment and methodology in teaching language. When reacting to learners’ erroneous performance, a sequence of factors has to be taken into consideration such as ‘the stage of the lesson, the activity, the type of mistake made and the particular student who is making that mistake’ (Harmer, 2007). For instance, when learners are taking part in an accuracy-oriented activity, teacher can verbally interrupt them once errors arise, which known as ‘teacher intervention’. Also, it is apparent that teacher correction mainly concentrates on linguistic rules such as incorrect verb intense, pronunciation or spelling (Harmer, 2007). By contrast, interruption is not suitable for communicative activities, as teacher intervention will deteriorate one of their characteristics -focusing on fluency. In such circumstances, Lynch suggests that teacher should give them correction as late as possible. In other words, teacher can correct mistakes after either learner’s utterance or the activity. Besides, teachers can be less strict in communicative activities, which means implicit corrections such as reformulation are applied here without interrupting the flow of convention (Hammer, 2007).

However, Philip Harmer (Harmer, 2007) conducted a research in a language school in south London and found that a large majority of learners prefer immediate correction while others liked to be corrected after activity. Thus, it is another factor for teachers to consider when choosing when to correct learners’ errors.  In addition, various treatment are adopted in language teaching in order to achieve better correction results, namely repeating error with question intonation, mirroring response in correct form, asking other students to correct and so on. I will show some examples according to my observation. The reasons why teachers should apply multiple correction methods are not simple. Firstly, teachers should take learners’ preferences into consideration. If learners prefer a cooperative atmosphere and like to help each other, teacher can ask other students to correct errors. Besides, exchanging correction techniques is of benefit to counterbalance the drawbacks of each other. For example, teacher intervention is not recommended in communicative tasks as it interferences the flow of learners’ oral production. But when obvious errors occur, teachers can not ignore so that they can use reformulation to remind students and keep their communication. In addition, correction techniques are chosen depending on various types of classes. If the class is based on group discussion, it is practical to ask students to correct each other. Similarly, in traditional classroom framework teacher standing in front of the class, repeating, echoing and question seem more appropriate.  Actually, corrective feedback is beneficial to both learners and teachers in classroom. With regard to learners, they notice the gap between their interlanguage and the target language and 

get closer to correct linguistic rules through corrective feedback. On the other hand, errors can be seen as signals of weakness in learners learning process (Gass and Seliner, 2008). When teachers offer corrective feedback to learners, it is also a progress to negotiate with learners and find effective ways to help them conquer problems.  Although teachers’ correction is essential and helpful, it never means that there are no problems in it. Sometimes teachers give learners correction without offering the location and category of errors, which lead to the first problem--learners get confused about teachers’ correction. Another problem needs to be concerned is that too many corrections may cause embarrassment and frustration to learners and discourage them to speak out. Besides, it is doubtful that some corrective feedback will deteriorate the communicativeness in language teaching. Another risk of corrective feedback is that if learners have no reaction after corrective feedback, it is no way to see how it works (Samar and Shyestefar, 2009). These are all negative aspect of corrective feedback.  In terms of correcting learners, teachers face some challenges. Many researchers doubt whether negative feedback is of value in communicative classrooms. According to their argument, communicative classrooms depend on authentic communications in real world (Thornbury, 1996) and create opportunities for genuine interaction for learners with peers and the teachers (Kumaravadivelu, 1993). In this circumstance, teachers are expected not to correct students in mid-flow as it may deteriorate fluency in interaction (Harmer, 2007). However, others argue that classrooms are unique social environment with its own 

pedagogical aims and characteristics (Breen and Candlin, 1980). Cullen holds ‘the view that communicative teaching means communicative teaching as well as communicative use of language, and the defining the notion of ‘communicative’ in relation to teacher talk must therefore take account the teachers’ dual role as instructor as well as interlocutor. Also, a model of communicative language teaching which recognize the importance of the pedagogical function of teacher talk within the classroom context, is likely to be a more realistic and attainable model for teacher to aspire to than one which insists on the replication of features of genuine communication as the only measure of genuine communication.’ In other words, corrective feedback is essential when students’ communication is at risk (Harmer, 2007). Thus, an appropriate way to assess the communicativeness in teachers’ corrective feedback depends on the characteristics of communicative language classrooms and the dual roles of teachers. 

Analysis 分析

In this part of analysis, four classes I observed are used for discussion. Among them, two classes are about teaching listening, while the rest are reading and speaking classes. Similarly, these four classes are based on a native teacher and international students, which mainly come from China. Also, they are all small classes and suitable for peer work and group discussion. In addition, there are some differences in them. Firstly, Listening 1 is a pre-sessional English class for general overseas students, while the other three, which are Listening 2, Reading and speaking 1 and 2 are in-sessional English class for students of specific academic backgrounds.

1. Corrective Feedback

1．1 Different types of corrective feedback

The criterion I used to categorize the types of response is according to Harmer’s (2007) argument that teacher correction involves two distinct stages. The first stage is ‘ showing incorrectness’, in which teachers inform students that an error is made. Then, teachers help learners deal with it in the following ‘Getting it right’ stage (Harmer, 2007: 144-45). In the 4 classes I observed (both video and real classrooms), teachers applied five types of showing incorrectness methods and six different ways in getting errors right. (1) Repeating A common way to show an error is that teachers ask students to say the answers again. For example: T: What is the other word for it? S: Subsidiary. T: Again. (repeating) S: Subsidiary. In this case, teacher used ‘Again’ to tell the student to notice there is something wrong with his utterance, and then he pronounced the word again. This method not only indicates an error is made but also gives learner an opportunity to try again. (2) Echoing There are many cases in my observation that teachers do not correct the mistake directly, instead they repeat it with question intonation. For example: T: Which did shock her? S: She feels dangerous to ask other students to correct. 

T: She feels dangerous? (echoing) S: Afraid to… It is apparent that repeating error with intonation is less explicit than interrupting students immediately in responding to learners’ error. The question intonation shows that the teacher may disagree with that word so the student modified it to another appropriate one. Through this type of showing incorrectness, leaners find the location of an error more precisely and efficiently. (3) Statement and question In the four classes I observed, ‘Statement an question’ is another frequent way to be used in giving corrective feedback. In this type of feedback, teachers often ask a question to stimulate learners’ awareness of uncertainty in the utterance. For example: S: Overbehave. T: Good try, but do people think ‘overbehave’ is correct? (statement and question) S: Oh, misbehave It is clear in the example that this method worked very well as the student followed the teacher’s question and noticed the error successfully. Also, this method gave the student time to think about his error and modify it naturally. (4) Clarification request Clarification request can be used in correcting forms as well as content. There are two examples in the observation showing these two aspects. (A) S: Some famous songs are format… T: What do you mean by ‘format’? (clarification request) 

S: Oh, that’s formulate… (B) S: I am a sexist. I treat men and women equally. T: Are you a sexist or not a sexist? S: I mean I’m not a sexist… In these two examples, the teachers used this method to require explanation from students when some mistakes influence the meaning of their production. (5) Hinting According to Harmer (2007), hinting is a quick way to activate learners’ schemata and guide them to get closer to the right answer. A case, which can illustrate how hinting works, is that: T: What am I doing? S: Bothering. T: Bothering? Another word when I want to know their business, I want to control, I want to ask questions. S: To stick your nose into someone’s business. It is apparent that hinting goes well with students and teachers sharing linguistic rules. Provided that teachers offer unfamiliar hints to students, the gap is impossible to be filled. (6) Reformulation Reformulation, which is mirroring responses in correct form ‘without making a big issue of it’, can be used to correct form as well as content (Harmer, 1988: 145). For example: S: I teach my wife to drive. T: On, so you taught her to drive, did you? S: Oh, yes, I taught her… 

Such reformulation acts as a quick reminder of how language should sound. It dose not put the student under pressure, but clearly points the way to future correctness. (7) Asking other students to correct In this way of correcting mistakes, more students rather then the speaker are invited. For example: S1: It’s a stop here. T: Is it a stop? Do you agree? S2: It is a comma. 

1.2 Distribution of corrective feedback types  

Repeating Echoing Statement and question Clarification request Hinting Reformulation Asking other students to correct Listening 1 2 6 3 4 6 5 6 Reading and speaking 1 3 5 2 4 3 2 4 Listening 2 2 5 7 5 4 0 5 Reading and speaking 2 4 3 4 2 3 1 1 Total 11 19 16 15 16 8 16 

According to Table 2, teachers applied these six positive feedback types for 101 times in total. Among them, echoing is the most frequently used item accounting for approximately 20 per cent, statement and questions, clarification and hinting come next (about 16 per cent individually), which is followed by repeating taking for nearly 11 per cent and using reformulation lays last (less than 8 per cent).  It is evident from the analysis of examples in the observation that defining whether a type of corrective feedback is meaningful in communicative classrooms is not a simple task. Even though some focus on correct language forms and some are used to modify content, it never means accuracy-related corrective feedback have no communicative value. For example, in the first example of ‘Statement and question’, the teacher tends to correct the specific word when the learner is speaking. In theory, this kind of feedback should be avoided in communicative classroom. However, the teacher’s correction made the student’s utterance more understandable and helped him notice the gap between his erroneous production and target forms, so it contributes to communicative language teaching. In addition, the method of clarification request is more or less ‘negotiation of meaning’ with students, which is one of characteristics in communicative interaction in classrooms. Besides, the example of reformulation in terms of corrective feedback shows that the teacher respond to the content of speaking with reformulating the mistake ‘teach’ as ‘taught’ in the learner oral production. This type of feedback focuses on both accuracy and fluency and the teacher acts his dual roles as instructor and interlocutor. Thus, an appropriate way of measure the communicativeness incorrective feedback is based on its function and pedagogical achievement rather its form.  According the observation, most corrective feedbacks in Listening 2 are given to correct erroneous language forms so that students are less motivated to speak more and the most talking time belongs to the teacher. Under this circumstance, it is doubtful that the aim of the class was achieved since the students are not quite involved in learning target language and collaborated with the teacher. Therefore, it is hard to say Listening 2 is a successful communicative class. 

1.3 When to correct errors

(1) Immediately Teachers used interrupting to respond to errors for three times totally in the four classes I observed. As mentioned in the literature review, interrupting probably interference the flow of communication so teachers do not overuse it. There is an example in my observation: S: Some famous songs are format… T: Not format, formulate. S: Yes, formulate… In this example, the learner noticed his error and acquired the correct answer after the teacher interrupted him. However, the student forgot the following content he wanted to say. Thus, it is doubtful if interrupting is an effective method in helping learners impart language at the expense of closing off the conversation. (2) After utterance 

T: What did she feel uncomfortable? S: She finds it hard to sleep. T: She found it hard to sleep, did she? S: Yes, she found, she did. It is a big trouble for her. (3) After activity A case in observing is that learners talked about special things they found in Liverpool and teachers walked around the classroom without interrupting their communication. Then, after students finished the conversation, teacher reported the mistakes he had heard. For example, the teacher indicated that students should say ‘on weekends’ instead of ‘in weekends’.  Table 2  Immediate After utterance After activity Listening 1 1 5 7 Reading and speaking 1 1 7 1 Listening 2 2 5 0 Reading and speaking 2 0 5 0 Total 4 22 8          Table 2 illustrates that teachers prefer to correct students after their utterance (nearly 65 per cent). Actually, there are seldom activities in Listening 2 and Reading and speaking 2, so no 

corrective feedback occurred after activities.  These examples in the observation demonstrate the importance of deciding when to treat an error in communicative classrooms. Firstly, the example related to ‘interrupting’ tells teachers try to avoid interfering learners when they are talking since it probably make learners embarrassed, frustrated and even forget the following talk. It impresses students that the teacher is only interested in forms instead of what they are talking about. Indeed, this does more harm than good to language teaching. Secondly, if teachers delay corrective feedback until the end of utterance, it can be more or less communicative. It can be seen in the example that teacher response to the learner after his utterance with an implicit correction on the grammar mistake. This kind of delayed correction has little negative impact on the flow of interaction as well as makes the learner aware of an mistake is made. In addition, another example describes how the corrective feedback works after the activity. It puts accuracy in front of accuracy, which quit suits to the criterion of communicative language teaching. Meanwhile, the teacher also takes the pedagogical achievement when giving corrective feedback after the activity in order to help learners get closer to the target forms as well as developing their fluency ability.  However, Reading and speaking 1 fails in encouraging learners’ communication, although most of correction are offered after students’ speaking. For example, after a student said ‘ Maybe they don’t want to…’ teacher corrected him with the sentence: ‘You should say they may don’t want to…’ without responding to the content. Consequently, measuring whether 

corrective feedbacks contribute to communicative language teaching does not solely rely on when they are applied but also how they work.  Combining these two elements in giving corrective feedback, Listening 2 is the most successful class among these four classes I observed. Its success is due to a sequence of reasons. Firstly, the teacher balanced fluency-oriented and accuracy- oriented corrective feedback in language teaching. For example, the teacher asked following questions to check whether students understand it after correcting mistake. Also, he seldom interrupted students speaking no matter when they answered his question or they discussed in small groups. Instead, he acted as interlocutor during the interaction and the instructor after that. Besides, the teacher asked other students to find mistakes and try to correct them, which involved more students dedicating in it and stimulated them to think about their interlanguage. For example, the teacher told students listen carefully when others speaking, after that, students indicated errors before teacher pointed out the right answers. Thus, with his careful consideration on how and when to treat learners’ error, learners were highly motivated in language acquisition and this would probably have positive influence on their following learning for a long period.  After evaluating the examples in observation, it is clear that corrective feedback is of great value in communicative language teaching. The vital element for using it efficiently is to choose appropriate methods and time due to various class types, student preferences and so on. Otherwise, it probably deteriorates the encourage of students as well as flow of communicative classrooms.

Conclusion 总结

This study focuses on investigating how teacher corrective feedback works in communicative language teaching. In this course of explanation, the first part offers the literature background of what is corrective feedback and the benefits as well as drawbacks in communicative classrooms, followed by exploring the specific types, values and functions of teacher corrective feedback in the observations. It also argues the measurement of judging whether corrective feedback is communicative or not. This study concludes that appropriate corrective feedback can facilitate communicativeness in language teaching. However, there are some limitations in this study. For instance, it lacks statistics related to the uptake of learners’ language skills after corrective feedback and their preferences of corrective feedback types. Additional research can continue to investigate this topic relating to how teachers exchanging their roles in communicative language teaching.

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