Error correction

Teachers must to study everyday. 

Students can fail all their exams and pass the course, does he? 

You don't must to pay the university registration fee, can't you? 

Yesterday was Monday, isn't they? 
 

Yet research conducted since the late 1970's has firmly established

that immersion students' L2 productive skills are not on a par with those of their

native-speaking counterparts.  In other words, immersion students do not attain

native-like proficiency in speaking and writing.

The reasons for this phenomenon are many and varied, but some are related

to instructional issues.  Most immersion teachers tend to focus their attention on

the instruction of subject matter content; academic achievement usually receives

increased emphasis because of school district expectations and parental concerns.

Yet "...subject-matter teaching does not on its own provide adequate language

teaching" (Lyster & Ranta, 1997, p. 41).  It has also been observed that lack of

systematic approaches for teaching specific language structures in meaningful

contexts and for attending to student errors contribute to less than optimal levels of

proficiency in immersion students (e.g., Chaudron, 1986; Harley, 1989; Kowal &

Swain, 1997; Lyster, 1987, 1994; Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Salomone, 1992; Swain &

Lapkin, 1986).

The focus of this issue's Bridge insert is on one of these instructional issues:

immersion teachers' responses to students' language errors.  Roy Lyster's research

in this area is highlighted in particular because we had the opportunity to learn

about his recent work during the 1997 Summer Institute for Immersion Teachers

held at the University of Minnesota.

Errors and Correction:  What Do Students Learn?

Lyster and Ranta (1997) point out that the research that has focused on the

issue of error treatment in second language classrooms in the past 20 years has

continued to pose the questions framed by Hendrickson in his 1978 review of

feedback on errors in foreign language classrooms. These questions are:•  Should learners' errors be corrected?

•  When should learners' errors be corrected?

•  Which errors should be corrected?

•  How should errors be corrected?

•  Who should do the correcting?

Appearing on the surface to be simple and straightforward, these questions

have been explored by scholars over the past two decades in a variety of L2

classroom settings and have been found to be quite complicated.  Recent work by

Lyster and Ranta (1997) in Canada, however, may help to provide some practical

advice for immersion teachers.  Lyster and Ranta's work is of particular interest

because it combines different types of error treatment, or corrective feedback, with

student responses to that feedback, or "learner uptake" (1997, p. 40). They were

especially interested in finding what types of error treatments encourage learners'

self-repair.  In other words, what types of corrective feedback lead students to correct

their own errors with an eye toward grammatical accuracy and lexical precision

within a meaningful communicative context?

Lyster and Ranta observed a variety of lessons in four different classrooms

representing two types of immersion programs.  Data were collected in one fourthgrade class in an early total immersion school (in which students had received

instruction in all areas in French since first grade, with approximately one hour per

day in English) and in three classrooms (two fourth-grade and one fourth /fifth

split) in a middle immersion school.  In this latter setting, the students had received

all instruction in English except for a daily one-hour French lesson until the fourth

grade. Beginning in fourth grade, approximately 60% of the school day is in French.

Subject areas in French include science, social studies, math, and French language

arts.  Approximately 18 hours of lessons in these four subject areas were observed

and audiotaped for analysis.  The data analysis yielded six different feedback types.  A

definition and examples of each type follow (Lyster, 1997; Lyster & Ranta, 1997).

Types of Corrective Feedback

1. Explicit correction. Clearly indicating that the student's utterance was incorrect,

the teacher provides the correct form.

2. Recast. Without directly indicating that the student's utterance was incorrect,

the teacher implicitly reformulates the student's error, or provides the correction.

3. Clarification request. By using phrases like "Excuse me?" or "I don't

understand," the teacher indicates that the message has not been understood or

that the student's utterance contained some kind of mistake and that a repetition

or a reformulation is required.

4. Metalinguistic clues. Without providing the correct form, the teacher poses

questions or provides comments or information related to the formation of the

student's utterance (for example, "Do we say it like  that?" "That's not how you

say it in French," and "Is it feminine?").

5. Elicitation. The teacher directly elicits the correct form from the student by asking

questions (e.g., "How do we say that in French?"), by pausing to allow the student

to complete the teacher's utterance (e.g., "It's a....") or by asking students to

reformulate the utterance (e.g., "Say that again."). Elicitation questions differ

from questions that are defined as metalinguistic clues in that they require more

than a yes/no response.

6. Repetition. The teacher repeats the student's error and adjusts intonation to

draw student's attention to it.

Uptake, or Learner Responses to Feedback

Lyster and Ranta's data also revealed different types of student responses to

teachers' corrective feedback.  Uptake is defined in their work as "a student's

utterance that immediately follows the teachers' feedback and that constitutes a

reaction in some way to the teachers' intention to draw attention to some aspect of

the student's initial utterance" (1997, p. 49).  Put another way, uptake shows what

the student tries to do with the teacher's feedback.

Two types of student uptake appeared in the data:  uptake that produces an

utterance still needing repair and uptake that produces a repair of the error on

which the teacher's feedback focused.  This latter type—uptake with repair—doesnot include self-initiated repair but rather those types of repairs that students

produced in direct response to the feedback provided by the teacher.

Results:  What did the classroom data reveal?

Lyster and Ranta found that approximately 34% of the student utterances

audiotaped during those 18 hours of class time contained some type of error.

Teachers responded with some type of corrective feedback to 62% of all the errors

produced by students.  Of all the feedback utterances produced by the teachers in

response to learner errors, 55%, or slightly over half, were found to lead to uptake of

some type on the part of the learner.  However, only 27% of the feedback utterances

led to student repair.  When Lyster and Ranta (1997) looked at the total number of

errors produced by students and the total number of repairs they produced, they

found that just 17% of the total errors made by students were repaired in some way

by students.

The study produced interesting results in terms of feedback types. Lyster and

Ranta found that the teachers in their study provided corrective feedback using

recasts over half of the time (55%).  Elicitation feedback was offered in 14% of the

cases, clarification requests 11%, metalinguistic feedback 8%, explicit correction 7%,

and repetition 5%.  Lyster and Ranta point out that the low percentage of repetition

feedback is rather deceptive because teachers often produce repetitions along with

other types of feedback.  More interesting still is Lyster and Ranta's analysis of what

types of corrective feedback lead to uptake that contained student-generated repairs.

These results are summarized in Table 1.

TABLE 1. NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF REPAIRS ATTRIBUTED TO EACH FEEDBACK TYPE

Feedback Type All Repairs

(n = 184)

Student-Generated Repairs

(n = 100)

Recast (n = 375) 66 (36%) 0

Elicitation (n = 94) 43 (23%) 43 (43%)

Clarification request (n = 73) 20 (11%) 20 (20%)

Metalinguistic feedback (n = 58) 26 (14%) 26 (26%)

Explicit correction (n = 50) 18 (10%) 0

Repetition (n = 36) 11 (6%) 11 (11%)

As clearly shown in Table 1, recasts and explicit correction did not result in

student-generated repair at all, because those two feedback types provide students

with the correct forms and thus can only lead to student repair that is a repetition of

the correct form provided by the teacher.  On the other hand, when the other fourtypes lead to repair, it must be student-generated because these feedback types do not

provide the correct form.

Lyster and Ranta summarize that student-generated repairs are important in

language learning because they indicate active engagement in the learning process

on the part of students.  This active engagement occurs when there is negotiation of

form, or when the students have to think about and respond to the teacher's

feedback in some way.  And this negotiation of form occurs when the teacher does

not provide the correct form but instead provides cues to help the student consider

how to reformulate his or her incorrect language.

Implications:  What Does This All Mean To The Classroom Teacher?

Lyster and Ranta are careful to conclude that their research on teacher

feedback and student uptake does not yield conclusive claims related to language

learning and that more research is needed.  Nevertheless, it is possible to suggest

some ideas for teachers based on their findings.  We offer four general suggestions

for teachers based on the classroom experiences of Ms. de Gortari and her colleagues.

* Consider the context. Before you plan systematic error correction practices for

your classrooms, you need to consider the context in which student language use

and errors occur.  As immersion teachers are well aware, students in the early stages

of cognitive development and language acquisition need to be encouraged to

produce language that communicates meaning; error correction techniques that

require student reflection on language structures or vocabulary are not appropriate

for learners in those early stages.  The types of corrective feedback techniques that

elicit student-generated repairs are clearly more appropriate for the more cognitively

mature and L2 proficient learners.

❷ Become aware of your current practices. Immersion teachers can benefit by taking

time to find out how they currently address student errors.  Ask a colleague or

classroom aide to observe you while focusing specifically on your feedback

techniques.  Or, should a colleague or aide not be available, audio record a number

of your lessons and reflect on the recording.

❸ Practice a variety of feedback techniques. Good teachers understand that one size

does not fit all.  Individual learners may well differ in terms of the particular error

correction technique most appropriate for their unique language development

needs.  Choosing to learn and use a few different types of feedback that seem to

produce student-generated repairs increases your chance of reaching more students.

❹ Focus on the learner—it's important to let the learner self-correct. Remember that your

students may well be more capable than you think!  As teachers we often feel an urge to

rush in with the correct response before students have had enough time to process the

information. If we allow time and provide appropriate cues for the learner to self-repair,

more often than not the student will come through.  The least effective technique for

correcting a student's incorrect language use is to simply give them the answer. ❍References

Chaudron, C. (1986). Teachers' priorities in correcting learners' errors in French

immersion classes. In R. Day (Ed.),  Talking to learn: Conversation in second

language acquisition (pp. 64-84). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Harley, B. (1989). Functional grammar in French immersion: A classroom

experiment.  Applied Linguistics, 10, 331-359.

Hendrickson, J. (1978). Error correction in foreign language teaching: Recent theory,

research, and practice. Modern Language Journal, 62, 387-398.

Kowal, M. & Swain, M. (1997). From semantic to syntactic processing: How can we

promote it in the immersion classroom? In R.K. Johnson & M. Swain (Eds.),

Immersion education: International perspectives  (pp. 284-309). NY:

Cambridge University Press.

Lyster, R. (1987). Speaking immersion.  Canadian Modern Language Review, 43(4),

701-17.

Lyster, R. (1994). La négociation de la forme: Stratégie analytique en classe

d'immersion.  Canadian Modern Language Review, 50, 447-465.

Lyster, R. (1997, July).  Attention to language in immersion classrooms. Presentation

at Meeting the Challenges of Immersion Education: Summer Institute for

Immersion Teachers, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.

Lyster, R. & Ranta, L. (1997). Corrective feedback and learner uptake: Negotiation of

form in communicative classrooms.  Studies in Second Language Acquisition,

19, 37-66.

Salomone, A. (1992). Student-teacher interactions in selected French immersion

classrooms. In E.B. Bernhardt (Ed.),  Life in language immersion classrooms

(pp. 97-109). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

Swain, M., & Johnson, R. K. (1997). Immersion education: A category within bilingual

education. In R.K. Johnson & M. Swain (Eds.),  Immersion education:

International perspectives (pp. 1-16). NY: Cambridge University Press.

Swain, M. & Lapkin, S. (1986). Immersion French in secondary schools: "The goods"

and "the bads." Contact, 5(3), 2-9.

You can contact authors Diane J. Tedick and Barbara de Gortari at, respectively, the

University of Minnesota, 150B Peik Hall, 159 Pillsbruy Drive SE, Minneapolis,

Minnesota 55455 (612) 625-1081; <djtedick@tc.umn.edu>; and Forest Glen Spanish

Immersion Elementary School, 6333 Lee Road, Indianapolis, Indiana 46236

(317) 823-5446; bbrt47a@prodigy.com