I chose to read this text because I've been especially interested in error correction lately, have been thinking about conducting a research with my Teen 4 groups on oral error correction and the effectiveness of doing the "immediate" or "on the spot" correction. Considering there are many articles on the groups related to error correction I have to be honest and admit that the choice of that specific article was random. But luckily (or not) it was a fortunate choice.
Maria Mantello makes reference to several researchers and publications on the topic, and explains the experiment she carried out on her French classes. I especially related to her writing because I too feel frustrated when correcting students writing, because it does seem that we keep correcting the same mistakes over and over, of the same students. Correcting takes such a long time and effort and attention from us, in the attempt of being thorough and fulfilling our role as a teacher and correcting all the students mistakes. And the impression I get is that we give them the corrected paper, they look at the grade and superficially (just a mere gaze) at the number of mistakes they've made, but they don't really read the corrections, they don't reflect upon them. So, many times I have caught myself wondering - what's the use?
Of course we can always find a student here or there that will look at the mistakes they've committed, try to be aware of them and avoid making the same mistakes again. but those are too few. So, what should we do?
I liked the idea of using two different techniques (in her case correction codes and reformulation), one for each group of the same level. This way she was able to better compare the progress and effectiveness of each technique during the experiment. However, I have to say that I found the idea of reformulation impractical for our reality at ABA, because it involves getting a native speaker to rewrite the student's piece, using a more authentic style and language structures. That is unrealistic, it could never be done in our current timeXcontentXamount of tasks to be done situation.
Nevertheless, her idea of focusing on correcting one specific structure being studied for some time was really interesting. It's not as tiring and apparently useless as correcting everything, and it doesn't give the feeling of "I'm not doing my job as a teacher" feeling that focusing on the content gives us. And according to her final results, it works. The students finally got the structure that was being corrected down.
Maybe the fact that students look at the corrections and don't see as many marks, or asking them to actually look at the paper, pointing out the fact you're focusing on the structure that's being studied motivates them. Focusing on one specific structure is certainly easier for the student.
I don't have the answers that I was possibly looking for - maybe a magic formula? But I have to say it gave me ideas and made me (once again) reflect on my practice, consider what I might be doing wrong. And I'm looking foward to experimenting that in class. Great reading!!!!
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I too found the idea of rewriting the student's work completely unrealistic (who are those people?!?), but I really like the idea of specific error correction or selective error correction. I hope that we can use the writing correction worksheets (by track) to do this. That way, we will have specific areas to focus on, instead of the random "correcting every error" approach.
Interesting things you wrote, Cecilia. I haven't gotten to the article yet, but writing errors are something I ponder over quite often. Perhaps the strategies presented in the book would work well - much better than correcting every error (as Catron has pointed out) - but it still doesn't clear things up as to how we might implement effective techniques such as this in our performance standards. What exactly are we all doing in class, to encourage learner growth in this area? How much attention is given to scaffolding throughout the process, in class? Just sharing thoughts...
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