I again revisit the BBC quiz show Call My Bluff.Two teams take it in turns to describe an obscure word, which their opponents would have to correctly identify. Only one description was the true one.Here we go again.

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Last week I wrote a few thoughts on correction and how both oral and written language can be corrected meaningfully, in a separate stage from “within the task itself”. One advantage of doing this work as a separate stage, which is more of a feedback stage perhaps than a correction slot, is to get away from the emotionally penalizing message of direct correction, although, to be honest, I think there is actually a place for this as well, when done sensitively and helpfully. As long as the feedback from the teacher is not only correcting errors but is also truly communicative discussing the content of what the learners are saying and not simply the form all the time is something that most learners appreciate and respond well to.

On the whole, however, I am in favour of separating correction from the task itself and using learner errors as the basis of a new cognitive feedback task where learners can analyse why errors happen, discuss possible corrections and then experiment with these forms at some length, so that, in this way there is greater elaboration and processing of language beyond a merely superficial level of looking at what is right or wrong and then moving on. Following a survey I carried out with my own students I discovered, which came as no surprise at all to me, the fact that although nobody feels good when they have made a mistake, they all still want to know about their mistakes so that they can learn from them.

Demand High Teaching

I would like to go further this week to say that using this separate stage as a focus space in the learning process for our students to elaborate the language processes comes under the heading of Demand High Teaching, which was first introduced by Jim Scrivener and Adrian Underhill at the Glasgow Iatefl Conference and was a hot topic at the Liverpool Iatelf Conference, this year too. This “meme” was introduced to question ritual teaching practices, where teachers apply the tenets of communicative teaching,  follow the coursebooks etc. , play fun games, and generally create “happy classrooms” but where the demand for learning is actually quite low, and the tasks themselves, or the materials end up being more important than the learners or the learning process and, I would add, teaching process.

Going Beyond the Surface by http://www.morguefile.com/creative/jade

Going beyond the Surface

There are undoubtably many classrooms around the world where the teachers are already applying meaningful techniques to materials in order to help their learners get the most out of them but there are also many teachers who are under pressure from their institutions to “finish 10 units of the book” or to “cover the syllabus for the exam” etc.  Scrivener points out the negative use of the word “cover” in this sense and how what it actually means is going over an exercise, for example, and checking the answers and as soon as one person in the class gives the correct answer, moving on to the next thing without stopping to question whether most of the class had really understood, what else they might be able to learn from this particular point or whether they had just got the right answer by chance. We all tend to be very aware of the time restraints in our lives, but sometimes, sadly, by trying to “cover” too much we are actually wasting time, as nothing is really explored in depth. The links I supplied above will take you to excellent videos explaining the thinking behind Demand High Teaching, which they explain, is not an approach, but a tweaking of what teachers are already doing to up the ante and enable their learners to get more out of the process.

Dogme

These ideas, in my view, fit in very well with the Dogme ideas of the unplugged classroom, which was also, if you like, a reaction against the glut of glossy materials that are available, and that are often overwhelming for teachers, particularly those who are new to the profession, simply because there are so many of them. Although Dogme may focus more on the learner, whereas High Demand teaching is more concerned with the learning the two, I think, can work very closely together particularly when it comes to the question of emergent language: the “learner language” that comes up spontaneously in a lesson. A teacher may, for instance, notice in the course of a discussion, that one class has particular problems with weak sounds such as the schwa in “was” and “were” and decide to work on that. There are many ways to do this but here is one suggestion.

Error Correction or Feedback?

FOCUS ON LANGUAGE ITEMS

The language point above would come up as an example of oral production, of course, and notes can easily be taken of two or three errors, (or if learners are comfortable with this a recording could be made ). If this is going to be explored in some depth it is probably better to limit the items to two or three.

ANALYSIS AND “SELF CORRECTION”

In the next session these errors could be analysed as the first step. (learners look at the phonetic transcript of the error or listen to the recording, or choose from minimal pairs offered by the teacher etc. and correct them together).

DISCUSSION

This would be followed by a feedback stage where real discussion takes place. This means that the teacher doesn’t immediately say “good” when he/she hears the correct answer, or what he/she wants to hear, but listens to what people say, throws questions to the whole class, and sometimes even goes off at a tangent if he/she sees that particular learners have focused on something unexpected (i.e. not in the orginal plan). For a discussion to be meaningful the teacher must be prepared to flollow the ideas of the learners rather than simply imposing his/her own, although at times the learners may also need to be directed back to the main discussion too. This is all part and parcel of the classroom management skills which are inherent to good teaching.

DEVELOPMENT

The next stage grows out of the discussion stage, and may involve more work on the original pronunciation items that the teacher has chosen or may be focused on something else that has emerged from the discussion. Jim Scrivener provided a very useful handout at his talk in Liverpool which can be downloaded at this link which has a whole range of techniques that could be applied here, such as “asking learners to imagine the facial expression they would wear when saying the target language, or asking learners to listen to the pronunciation and then “replay it in their heads” rather than simply listen and repeat, which often does not give them enough time to elaborate it.

EXPERIMENTATION

Further eperimentation is, in my view, not an extra but essential as it is only when you get to “make the language your own” that you learn how to use it effectively. If the original item analysed was something like “I was just sitting at home reading, when the rain started and then I saw that it was a tornado.” (This happened yesterday in an area quite close to me where some of my students come from) Learners might be asked, for instance to think of what they were doing at that point in time, and to tell each other. There is a wealth of activities that teachers already use that can be applied here. The key is simply to apply them meaningfully, allowing the learners the time and space they need to elaborate the language.

PARTING SHOT

This may have come a long way from correction but it is, I think the natural progression of correction into feedback, which is a must if we want our learners to have the time to really process language. Going as quickly as possible to “cover the coursebook or the syllabus” means doing our learners a disservice in the long run as they will not have the time to internalize or to elaborate everything, literally of course, covering something means hiding it, instead of revealing the mechanics of the language. Listening to our learners, on the other hand, and helping to assist their learning process is one of the most difficult but possibly most rewarding aspects of being in a classroom.

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Confused

To correct or not to correct?

Different teachers have different views on this question, sometimes based on well thought out theories, or observation of learning in practice, and sometimes… Well, sometimes not.

Being corrected: how does it feel?

The thinking goes that learners, being delicate hothouse plants will wither if corrected, and no longer be able to bloom. Well, actually, in fact it is true that most of us have mixed feelings about being corrected. Nobody likes to think that they have made a mistake… after all, some of us grew up with parents and teachers etc. who penalised errors at every turn, so of course, we react badly when “we make a mistake”: it is an irrational emotional reaction to something that we learned was “bad” at a very deep level. On the other hand, most of us want to be able to improve whatever it is we are learning and to become more effective so in language learning this means knowing what those errors are and learning how the language works so that we can express ourselves as well as possible. These are all reasons why the usual approach for teachers is to correct “sensitively” as generations of teacher trainees have been told, and yet this often translates, particularly for new teachers who are unsure about so many areas of teaching (after all they are learning too ) into not correcting at all, with the justification of not “hurting students’ feelings”.

Change your perspective

How can we get away from the idea that “errors” are BAD; BAD; BAD?

I would go slightly further than saying that we need to correct sensitively and say that we need a shift in perspective, where errors are seen as an interesting side effect of the language learning process. Once they are robbed of their explosive emotional charge, we can start to look at why they occur, and how they differ from the standard usage. If, for instance, a student chooses the word “side”, saying or writing “on the one side” when what they want to say is “on the one hand” it is interesting for that learner to be able to see how the target language differs from their L1, and by analysis and further experimentation using the “correct form” they will be able to integrate it into their own personal English lexicon. This is just one example of how error analysis can be of great value to learners, once the idea of the “terrible mistake” has been banished from the equation.

The question of when and how to correct of course is also important  and there are various considerations for all of us as  teachers to bear in mind: here are three of the fundamental ones, in my view:

1) What is the aim of the task the learners are doing?
2) What and How do you intend to correct?
3) Where will the learner go next?

So let’s look at each if these questions in turn:

1) What is the aim of the task the learners are doing?

This is the first thing to think of, in my view, because if your task focuses on fluency or is a warmer at the beginning of a lesson, then it may not be so appropriate to correct learners directly or even at all, and this is true whether we are thinking about written or oral production. We all know what happens when students are in the middle of a discussion and the teacher intervenes and says: “Go?.. In the past?” trying to elicit “went” or any of the other correction techniques we all use: the students, obviously, stop thinking about the ideas they were discussing and focus on accuracy. The underlying message here is that what is important is getting it right not exchanging or communicating your ideas. Of course, there is a time for accuracy. I’d be the first person to say this, but not when we are focusing on fluency.

Our Learner Facebook page

Informal Expression Spaces for Learner Fluency

This is why we have the idea of indirect correction too. You might choose to make a note of language points during a discussion, for later use in an accuracy slot, or you might
simply choose to have a space for expression and not correct at all. My own personal example of informal expression space for my learners is our learners’ Facebook page, where we often extend discussions that we have started in class, and it is an informal space where people post their ideas and “talk to each other”. This is made clear at the start of term, and the learners are happy because they can experiment there and they know at correction will be taken care of in other places. However, even here, if I see something of particular interest, or if I have noticed interesting language points in student homework or in class that I want to underline, I will post these points on the Facebook page with explanations, comments and space for experimentation. This is once again , with the idea of analysing language, drawing attention to things and building on their knowledge, rather than penalising them for something that is “wrong”. It is also helpful to point out good language use as well, things that you find particularly expressive from learners’ work as we can never have too much praise as long as it is genuine. What is also nice is that learners have naturally started asking for help in their Facebook posts too, for vocabulary etc. in a very natural way without feeling that they will be judged negatively for not knowing something.

I am very much in favour of accuracy slots in lessons, to deal with language areas that need work, and these, like everything else need to become part of the learning system. This leads us on to the second question.

2) What do you intend to correct?

When I first started teaching I was very enthusiastic and I intervened directly correcting pronunciation grammar, vocabulary choice etc. when clarifying models, and particularly when trying to provide learners with clear models to use. When my learners were doing group work I made copious notes of all their errors and then had accuracy slots where I wrote up their errors for them to correct, and did the occasional grammar auction as well as other activities. All of this, I am sure, was very helpful for my students, but looking back I think I did not really focus systematically on what I was correcting so I just wrote down the errors I heard. All this, I now think, may well have been too much input for my learners so I now try to focus on various themes. I may choose a particular pronunciation point that I hear repeated, or focus on collocations for vocabulary, or one or two particular grammar areas, such as misuse of the definite article for general plural nouns, etc. and then focus on this. I also try to find effective usage of the same points for learners to see as well. I  tend to add an experimentation phase these days, after the cognitive work involved in correcting the errors too, as I am convinced that the more learners “use the language” the more they make it their own, and noticing an error, correcting it and then using the correct form is a step towards greater mastery.

How important is Language Awareness?

Of course, language awareness is only one of the skills that a teacher needs, but let’s face it we are teaching a language, and if we are not aware of how that language works it will be extremely difficult for us to help our learners to use it. If your driving instructor did not know what the mirrors were for you wouldn’t put a lot of faith in him/her, would you?

Being aware of language for teachers also means being aware not only of the errors being made, but being aware of the process of learning and the progress learners are making too. If a learner chooses the wrong verb in a collocation, such as “the writer gives importance to…”, they are still experimenting to use that phrase so teachers should, I think, be helping them to navigate these exciting waters of lexical discovery, not getting them to walk the plank for making a mistake. This is not so easy to do as it may seem, as what tends to hit us smack on the nose is the error, rather than the process of experimentation behind it. There are those who cling to accuracy at all costs, interfering at inappropriate times, such as when learners are working on fluency or even when they are trying to read or listen to something, since they perceive “correcting errors” or “explaining unknown words” as being the major role in their job. This is not, of course, something I am advocating as I feel that recognition of a learner’s interlanguage is crucial, and giving praise for effort is essential to encourage and motivate our students.

Where next?

3) Where will the learner go next?

As I mentioned above, I believe that after recognising and correcting their errors learners need to be able to work with the “correct forms”. If the correction is done directly as part of the clarification of new language models then the students will presumably have the opportunity to experiment with these forms later in the lesson. If the errors come up in written language they can be dealt with in various ways. My students are all familiar with the correction code I use and our normal procedure is as follows:

1) a written task is set.

2) students post their written work on a noticeboard like linoit (Here is an example of some recent work we have been doing. Learners were asked to write descriptions of their favourite places which we were later going to publish on Tripadvisor.)

3) I correct their texts with Markin’ a great correction tool. and then publish these texts on our class blog. Scroll right down until you come to a section in the second term called Week Four “My Place” and under this you will see a word document called “My Place Word” and you will see what these texts look like.)

4) Students then come to my office hours to discuss their corrections.

5) The texts are reviewed and revised and finally published for global consumption on Tripadvisor.

Points 4) and 5) of this process are, in my view, perhaps the most interesting because the learners go back to their texts, having learned how to look more carefully at how the language works and they then publish those texts for a real reason. This is no longer an exercise in class but becomes a real communicative act in the big wide world. When other people then comment on their texts on tripadvisor the whole thing becomes even more exciting and brings it home to them that they are actually using English effectively. This is its own high!

This, of course, is merely one example of how to integrate correction in a positive way into the learning process.

So, I think, at the end of this little foray into language analysis we have come a long way really from the traditional idea of correction as being the righting of wrongs, and in fact it is more like a crystal sphere which learners can learn to benefit from, seeing how the language works and how to make their own expression more effective. So, let’s keep on helping our learners to improve their own English and to enjoy discovering new language and magical new ways of communicating with each other and the rest of the world.

Dreaming

be able to integrate new ideas and tools into our own systematic approach to teaching so here’s my latest foray through the Technology Looking Glass.

Fotobabble

I had been thinking about using this site for a while, and I finally got round to it. The idea is that you choose a photo and record your comment, sotry, questions, whatever… Simple but effective. So h

ere’s my first idea.
I chose a photo that I took in Liverpool and linked it  the theme of “waiting” as it seems to me that a lot of the “objects” are doing just that and then I posted this on my student Facebook page and asked them to comment on what was waiting, who or what for etc. This would then lead in to work in class on a poem entitled, yes, you’ve guessed it… “Waiting” which would then go on to a writing exercise. I’ll tell you more later:
http://www.fotobabble.com/m/OUI4aXk2L3Babnc9

The bright, shiny lights and colours all around us get to be too much, at times, for me to see which one to follow; which one is the flame of inner creativity and motivation that lights us up inside and which one is simply a gaudy neon sign that flashes on and off in my email box, distracting me for a few minutes before it fades. Yes, those lights are pretty too and can wow us all for a day, but then the novelty wears off and we are left wondering what all tthe fuss was about. They are like the icing on the cake, but if it is all icing with no cake we might very soon tire of it. What we want is a true inner light, that illuminates our tthinking, leading to a true sense of wonder and meaningful discovery in both teacher and learner.

We both need to make sense of the world and sense of the learning or teaching. My sense is not necessarily your sense and that is fine if we can walk along together for a while and I can show you my favourite tree, whilst you show me thte strtech of water beyond the forest, which beckons with the promise of adventure and new horizons.

Some claim that true exchane between teacher and learner are hampered by rigid rules of hierarchy, and that they cannot really exist, but this is not always true. Although hierarchy can be a daunting framework, in classrooms it often exists for a reason and needs to be established first until we all feel comfortable with each other, before we can go beyond it muting the barriers by the meaningful use of respect and the lsharing of ideas both in class, inforamlly and even,why not, through social media these days. By far the most important ingredient in the mix, though, is still, I think, communication whether on or offline. If we listen to each other and take care to try to understand the message each one of us is trying to get across then we are on the road towards understanding and reciprocal exchange. Where there is a lack of communication there can only be misunderstandong and stunted growth… definitely not education.

3 key moments in their 2012

3 rituals

3 places they had visited

3 events that they were involved in

3 hopes or pieces of advice for 2013

Of course they could also make their own smileboxes as homework, which was an optional extra to then post on our Facebook Page

Here are two versions:

Let me know what happens if you do this with your students

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Our Latest Radio Show + Podcast: Opening to Our Lives: Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Science of Mindfulness (» download mp3) ““It doesn’t actually take any more time to say good-bye or hug you know, your children…

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