TEACHING ENGLISH: ESL ERROR CORRECTION STRATEGIES FOR YOUNG LEARNERS. USE OF CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK AND ITS EFFECT ON LEARNER’S UPTAKE
TEACHING ENGLISH: ESL ERROR CORRECTION STRATEGIES FOR YOUNG LEARNERS. USE OF CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK AND ITS EFFECT ON LEARNER’S UPTAKE
Ianina Sharafilova
Student, Faculty of Linguistics, Department of Applied linguistics and Intercultural communication, Moscow International Academy,
Russia, Moscow
ABSTRACT
This article will explain the special area of teaching English such as correction mistakes while learning and giving feedback to young students, ideas and approaches for use with children.
Keywords: teaching English, ESL, teachers, young learners, error correction, feedback.
Teaching English to young learners has become very important in recent years. There are many good teaching ways in Primary ESL classrooms. However, it is a fact that some teachers find themselves teaching in schools even thought they have not been trained, there is a lack of good books and other materials concerning this important area of teaching language.
This article will explain the special area of teaching English such as correction mistakes while learning and giving feedback to young students, ideas and approaches for use with children. It is not easy to find out what it is to be a child, so teachers have to adapt their styles of teaching to accommodate the needs and motivations of young learners.
Patience
All education, not only the teaching of English language, should contribute positively to the good development.
Speaking is the most demanding skill for teachers to teach. In their own language children are able to express emotions, communicate intensions and reactions, explore the language in the different ways and make it fun. So if we want our little students to continue thinking about English simply and positively as a means of communication, then we cannot expect to be able to predict what language way the children will use. Their choice is infinite, we cannot decide what they will say or want to say exactly. You will also find that young learners will often naturally insert their native language when they cannot find the words in English.
Some teachers are understandably impatient with those students who do not try to learn. In this case we must be patient with our children.
Patience gives students time to learn. Let time be on the student’s side. Patient teachers restrain themselves from accelerating their instruction where their material seems relatively easy to their learners. Even if a single student has difficulty, these teachers try to find time for one-on-one coaching outside regular class hours rather than detain the entire group by addressing that student’s needs in class sessions.
Patient teachers also extend themselves without complaining that additional effort may be unpaid work or that extra work is not part of their professional obligations.
Patience takes into account the weaknesses of youth. If students are silly, if their spirits sometimes overcome their powers, if they forget themselves and the respect due to their teacher’s authority, then before all this, teachers must nevertheless restrain themselves, count to ten, wait for the fit of impatience to pass, and then point out their young learners without rancor the foolishness of their behaviour. Teachers are themselves foolish if they expect students to behave prudently and with discretion at all times.
Gentle correction
The way teachers asses and correct students will depend upon the kind of mistakes being made, the reasons for them, on the activities our children are taking part in. Errors are part of the children’s interlanguage, that is the version of the language which a learner has at any age and at any stage of development. When responding to errors teachers should be seen as providing feedback, helping that reshaping process rather than telling students off because they are wrong.
Assessment of student can come from the teacher gently.
What is important with beginners is finding the balance between providing language through controlled and guided activities and at the same time letting them enjoy natural talk. Most of the children have little opportunity to practise speaking English outside the classroom and so need lots of practice when they are in class.
When young learners are working with controlled and guided activities, teachers need to want them to produce correct language. If they make mistakes at this stage, then they should be corrected at once. During this type of activity the pupils are using teacher or textbook language, and the children are only imitating or giving an alternative, so correction is gentle straightforward.
As with any type of classroom procedure, teachers need to play a number of different roles during the speaking activities, because learners sometimes get lost, cannot think of what to say next, or in some other way lose their fluency we expect of them. We can leave them to struggle out of such situations on their own, and indeed sometimes this may be the best option. However, we may be able to help them and the activity to progress by offering discrete suggestions. If this can be done in a gentle way supportively, without forcing students out of the role, it will stop the sense of frustration that some young learners feel when they come to a ‘dead end’ of language or ideas.
When pupils are working on free oral activities, we are trying to get them to say what they want to say, to express themselves and their own personalities. The language framework of the activity is often quite tightly controlled by the teacher, but the emphasis for the pupils should be on content. If pupils are doing problem solving or working on any activities, then correction of language mistakes should not be done while the activity is going on. The teacher can note what he or she thinks should be corrected and take it up in class later. But of course, if somebody asks the teacher what is correct or what the English word for X is while they are talking, then the teacher should give them the answer.
In general, all teaching is an exercise in patience and being gentle. We wish our young learners would move on, and we want to move them on, too. But that desire is often more a reflection of our hopes than of our student’s true situation. They struggle, they are confused, they are not prepared to move forward. So, we harness our hopes to their condition.
Most teachers forget that teaching is an art. Trained in the sciences and techniques of education, professional teachers are conscientious in applying the psychology and methods that they have learned.
The place of feedback
Feedback is among the most common features of successful teaching and learning. But there is an interesting point: while feedback is among the most powerful moderators of learning its effects are among the most variable.
Thought feedback (both assessment and correction) can be very helpful during oral work teachers should not deal with all oral production in the same way. Decisions about how to react to performance will depend upon the stage of the lesson, the activity, the type of mistake made, and the particular student who is making mistakes.
For example, since topic-based work is complete in itself, it gives the teacher and the children a good opportunity to assess what they’ve been doing. Do this assessment in the mother tongue. Ask the children what they liked/disliked doing. What they would have liked to spend more/less time on? Which stories did they like? Although small children find this type of assessment very difficult to begin with, it is well worth starting in a very casual way with five to seven years old. Young learners take pride in being taken seriously, and we could perhaps spend a little more time finding out and taking into consideration our pupil’s reactions and opinions. Besides, most students want and expect us to give them feedback on their performance.
Nothing in language teaching is quite that simple, of course. There are times during communicative activities when teachers may want to offer correction feedback or suggest alternatives because the student’s communication is at risk, or because this could be just the right moment to point the learner’s attention to a problem. But intensive correction can be just unpleasant feedback during accuracy work. Feedback is a highly personal business and draws, more than any other classroom interactions, on the rapport between the teacher and some students. A good teacher should be able to give feedback without offending his young learners. This means, not reacting to absolutely every mistake that a student makes if this will de-motivate that student.
Over-use even a gentle correction and gentle feedback will, however, be counter- productive. By constantly interrupting the flow of the activity, we may bring it to a prompt may help the conversation move along without intruding too much or whether, on the contrary, it is not necessary and has the potential to get in the way of the conversation.
Feedback can be provided in many ways: through affective process, increased effort, motivation, engagement; by providing students with different cognitive process, restricting understanding, confirming to the young learner that he or she is correct or incorrect, indicating in a gentle way that more information is available or indeed, pointing to the directions that the students might pursue, and indicating alternative strategies with which to understand particular information. A key consideration is that feedback typically comes second after instruction and thus its effectiveness is limited if it is provided in a vacuum.
An important notion is that feedback thrives on error, but error should not be considered the privilege of lower-achieving learners. All students, as all teachers, do not always succeed first time, nor do they always know what to do next, and nor do they always attain perfection. This is not a deficit, or deficit thinking, rather it is the opposite in that acknowledging errors allow for opportunities. Error is the difference between what we know and can do, and what we aim to know and do.
References:
- Visible Learning for Teachers. Maximizing impact on learning, 2012, John Hattie, Routledge, London and New York
- The Practice of English Language Teaching, 2016, Jeremy Harmer, Longman
- The Elements of Teaching, 2017, James M. Banner, Jr., and Harold C. Cannon, Yale University press, New Haven and London
- Teaching English to Children, 2014, Wendy A. Scott and Lisbeth H. Ytreberg, Longman