Feedback and teaching vocabulary translating academic research findings into
classroom practice
Alice Gruber
International School Stuttgart
Aim of this session:
-
Discuss findings about written and spoken feedback
Analyse different types of feedback
Share your practice
Discuss vocabulary teaching
Error Correction (Corrective Feedback - CF)
Issues:
• which errors
• how many errors
• how to correct
• when to correct (for spoken feedback)
Feedback can influence self-efficacy
Self-efficacy: people’s perceptions of their ability to
perform well on a given task.
• more easily destroyed by negative feedback than
restored by positive feedback.
• twice as much positive feedback as negative
feedback (e.g. Voerman et al 2012).
• Students are good at recognising formulaic positive
comments (Hyland and Hyland 2001).
• Language aptitude, learning style, anxiety, and
attitudes (Conrad & Goldstein, 1999; Sheen, 2011)
• Learners’ beliefs influence:
whether or not they retain feedback (Storch
&Wigglesworth, 2010)
• whether they prefer content over
grammar feedback (Hyland, 2011)
• Feedback perceived as demotivating: unlikely
to attend feedback
• Beginners: easily overwhelmed (Bitchener and
Ferris 2011)
• Comments should be specific rather than
formulaic (Hyland and Hyland 2001)
Written corrective feedback
Students:
expect and value teacher feedback (e.g., Eginarlar,
1993; Ferris, 1995;) and prefer the more explicit
option.
expect their teachers to point out and correct their
errors.
tend to believe that they cannot possibly correct
their own errors without that specific information.
Students: feel that teachers should focus their
feedback on local issues (such as grammar and
mechanics)
Direct and indirect feedback
Direct WCF: when the teacher provides the correct form
• e.g. crossing out of an unnecessary word, the insertion of
a missing word, and the provision of the correct form or
structure
Reasons for giving direct feedback
• clear information to help them resolve more complex
errors (for example, syntactic structure)
• may be appropriate for some error types (e.g. idiomatic
lexical issues such as prepositions)
• Disadvantages?
• In advanced proficiency classroom settings:
direct error correction plus oral meta-linguistic
explanation (5 minute one-on-one conferences)
(Bitchener, Young and Cameron 2005)
• Ferris (2010) questions the practicality of this
• an instructional emphasis on written errors may neglect
other aspects of writing, such as ideas, organization and
processes.
Indirect WCF
Indirect feedback
Pointing out errors but without correcting (e.g. underlining
or circling an error).
• Lalande (1982) argued that indirect CF is preferable
because it requires reflection and problem-solving,
leading to more long-term growth in writing/selfmonitoring ability.
• for lower proficiency writers in language learning classes,
indirect feedback tends to be less preferred because
they have a more limited linguistic repertoire to draw on
(Bitchener and Knoch 2010).
Written Feedback
• Direct/indirect feedback
• Your thoughts/comments/practice?
Focus and unfocused feedback
focused WCF: teacher targets a small number of specific
errors
unfocused WCF: all/most errors are corrected
Potential issues?
students generally prefer unfocused rather than focused
correction (Bitchener and Ferris 2011).
Some studies: focused WCF is more valuable than
unfocused (Ferris et al 2013).
But: students might underestimate the amount of effort and
attention it takes to self-edit an important piece of writing.
Students may be misled by selective error feedback
because students may mistakenly think that the rest of
their writing is completely right (Lalande 1982)
Constraints regarding feedback
• Pienemann's Processability Theory (PT) predicts a
predictable order of acquisition in language learning.
e.g. in ESL question formation:
(Pienemann 1998)
• Feedback on a particular grammar point: only useful if
the learner is at a stage where they are ready to acquire
the feature
• It is unlikely that teachers will be sufficiently familiar with
individual learners’ interlanguages (Hashemnezhad
2012)
• consider what the learners expect: will be more likely to
engage in the feedback process and be more effective
users of the feedback they receive (Bitchener and Ferris
2011)
Written Feedback
• Focused/unfocused feedback
• Your thoughts/comments/practice?
focused WCF: teacher targets a small number of
specific errors
unfocused WCF: all/most errors are corrected
Oral Feedback
Explicit feedback:
Overt error correction
(possibly with the provision of a grammatical explanation,
metalinguistic information)
(1) L2 learner: My father work every day.
(a) No, you should say works, not work.
(b) The verb needs to agree with the subject.
(c) Father is the subject of the verb. So, you should say, “My father
works, instead of my father work.”
• drawback
it is more obtrusive than other types of correction
and could disrupt the flow of communication.
• If metalinguistic information is provided:
this kind of feedback promotes not only noticing but
also understanding, which can lead to deeper learning
(Sheen 2010)
Implicit feedback:
• signals incomprehensible language or a misformulation
without interrupting the flow of the interaction.
• attempt to clarify meaning and prevent a breakdown in
communication.
• Negotiation strategies: confirmation checks,
clarification requests and comprehension checks.
NNS: I bought a basen of flowers.
NS: a basin? (Confirmation check)
NNS: a base
NS: a what? (Clarification request)
NNS: a base …. a glass of flowers
NS: oh, a vase
NNS: yes, a vase of flowers
Elicitation
Eliciting completion of students’ own utterance by
strategically pausing to allow students to fill in the blank
No, not that. It‘s a . . ..
How do we say X in French?
students are asked to reformulate their utterance (Faqeih
2012)
Opportunities for self-repair, promoting and automatizing
the retrieval of the forms learners are familiar with
Opportunity for hypothesis testing: may have a
facilitative effect for foreign language development
(Nassaji 2009).
Your thoughts/comments/practice regarding these
types of feedback
explicit and implicit feedback
elicitation
Recasts
Recasts are “utterances that repeat a learner’s incorrect
utterance, making only the changes necessary to produce
a correct utterance, without changing the meaning”
(Nicholas, Lightbown and Spada (2001: 733).
NNS: I don’t know much people here.
NS: many people here
recasts are the most common form of error correction
employed by language teachers. (Oliver and Mackey
(2003), Sheen (2004))
Lyster (1998): recasts are ambiguous to learners because
they occur alongside other types of feedback, such as
non-corrective repetitions
Lyster and Ranta’s (1997) study showed that
nearly 70% of recasts went unnoticed by the
students.
efficacy of recasts is constrained by a number of
factors, for example:
--learners’ proficiency (Panova and Lyster, 2002;
Mackey and Philp, 1998),
-choice of target form (Carpenter et al., 2006; Kim
and Han, 2007),
• recasts of morphosyntactic errors are less
noticeable than recasts of phonological and lexical
errors, and longer recasts are less effective than
shorter recasts
• In order for recasts to be effective, the focus needs
to be on one error and it needs to be clearly
signalled as a recast.
Can be an effective form of feedback:
they may be an opportunity for learners to modify their
output and it may increase the salience of a particular
form.
Can raise learners‘ awareness of what they are
unable to say in the target language or that there is a
difference between their version and the version of
the target-language.
Your thoughts/comments/practice regarding recasts
Recast: correct the mistake by repeating a
learner’s utterance without the mistakes.
Self-Correction
In general, the advice given to teachers is to try to
elicit self-correction from the learner rather than to
correct directly (Erlam et al 2013)
Problems with self-correction:
• Learners prefer the teacher to do the correction for
them.
• Only possible if learners possess the necessary
linguistic knowledge.
• Depends on students’ analytical ability and accuracy
What to correct
• The gravity of an error - a matter of personal opinion
(Ellis 2009).
• Some teachers were inclined to view all errors as equally
serious—“an error is an error.” (Vann, Meyer, and Lorenz
(1984))
• Treat those errors which are regularly repeated by one or
more students
(Moss 2000)
• correct frequent, serious and stigmatising mistakes
(Bitchener and Ferris (2011))
• Not been exposed to a language form or are not ready to
learn a particular structure: there is little point in
intervening and giving feedback.
Delayed or immediate CF?
• Hedge (2000) noted that teacher guides
accompanying course books frequently instruct
teachers to leave correction until the end of fluency
activities.
• There is no research evidence to show that
immediate correction is any more effective than
delayed.
Your thoughts/comments/practice regarding
delayed/immediate CF and what to correct
Vocabulary learning and teaching
• Krashen (1993) points out, "When students travel, they
don't carry grammar books, they carry dictionaries”
• Vocabulary knowledge correlates highly with
performance in listening, reading and writing.
• Learning a word involves a receptive-productive
continuum: receptive processing (for comprehension)
and productive processing (for production)
• active and passive vocabulary
Learning a new word - the chance of a new word being
stored in long-term memory
Involvement load hypothesis (Hulstijn and Laufer 2001)
need: depends on whether the word is necessary to
complete a given task
search: refers to the learner trying to find the meaning of a
L2 word, using a dictionary or other sources, for instance
teachers or peers.
evaluation: decision-making during tasks, for instance a
comparison of a given word with other words
• The higher the level of the involvement load, the
more effective the task is in promoting vocabulary
learning
• For example: flashcards to teach vocabulary versus
exploring vocabulary via reading texts
• Introducing vocabulary in lexical sets, i.e. word class
sets, does not necessarily facilitate learning.
• A thematic group containing the words sweater, changing
room, try on, wool, striped may be more effective than
the words scarf, tie, coat, pants and skirt, which are a
semantically related set (Erten and Tekin 2008)
• L1 translations: more effective than providing L2-based
meanings (Ramachandran and Rahim (2004)
• For relatively experienced L2 learners, L2–L1 word pairs
may be more effective than L2-picture pairs (Lotto and
de Groot 1998)
• Learning lists of vocabulary with translations is an
efficient way to learn the large volumes a language
requires (Fitzpatrick, Al-Qarni and Meara 2008)
Your thoughts/comments/practice regarding vocabulary
teaching
Summary
- Variables influence feedback uptake (e.g. learners’
beliefs, whether students are ready…..)
- Feedback influences self-efficacy (give twice as much
positive feedback)
- Consider what learners expect when giving CF
- Recasts: potentially ambiguous – one at a time and
clearly signalled.
- Active vs. passive vocabulary
- Involvement load: need, search, evaluation
- Teach different word classes together, in a thematic
group
Thank you for listening!
grubera@issev.de
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