Despite the profusion of studies concerning the role of corrective feedback in instructed SLA (think of the typical six-item lists of ‘common CF techniques’, descriptions of idealized decision-making processes teachers should attempt, and ongoing ‘debate’ over which types of techniques are better, etc.) there is relatively little research that directly investigates the nuanced, often subtle multitasking that skilled teachers employ in real-time when managing learners’ language errors in authentic classroom contexts. This study by Drew S. Fagan, Ed.D does just that, using conversation analysis tools to examine error management practices that surface in 26 hours of footage of an experienced teacher’s class. It spotlights two key practices which systematically imbue classroom corrective feedback episodes with engaging positivity.

Article

Fagan, D. S. (2015). Managing language errors in real-time: A microanalysis of teacher practices. System, 55: 74-85. Retrieved from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0346251X15001505

The study

Fagan transcribed 26 hours of video recordings of an advanced-level 11-member class taught by an experienced teacher (called ‘Ann’) at a community language program in the US. Three cameras were positioned to record all interactions in the classroom. A detailed transcription key was used to document virtually all verbal and nonverbal communicative cues (quiet/raised/quicker/slowed speech and prosody, laughter, pausing, elongated sounds, eye contact/movements, gesture, etc.). Multiple stages of discursive analysis were employed to identify and describe distinct feedback management practices, including many “minute cues”, utilized during Ann’s turns-at-talk.

Findings

All six of the classroom transcript excerpts in the article illustrate Ann’s use of multilayered verbal and nonverbal cues to maintain attentional control, focus on very specific bits of language (used and unused, accurate and inaccurate), respond to queries, and prompt reformulations, facilitating rich series of learning opportunities.

Above all, this study finds that in her management of learners’ language errors Ann systematically (1) foregrounds achievement and (2) provides personal appreciation.

Foregrounding Achievement

 

 

An example of foregrounding achievement is performed in line 4 of the excerpt above, when Ann says ‘of is perfect’. This opens this brief feedback episode directing attention to what the student is able to do rather than what they can’t do. So quickly after this does Ann shift to addressing a correction that it almost seems difficult to disentangle praise and correction.

The above excerpt and two others in the study also show Ann systematically foregrounds achievement while managing errors by:

• prompting learners with eye contact/gaze, pausing, and slowing speech (see how the elongated ‘cha:nge’ in line 6 above prompts peer correction)
• speeding up (esp. when providing explicit corrections)
• emphasizing how close errors are to being accurate (“pretty close, pretty close”)
• using non-verbal cues (nodding and smiling)

Finally, Fagan notes that the way Ann foregrounds achievement in conjunction with correction is never simply “perfunctory”. I think this is a crucial point. Ann never says “Good, but…”, generically ‘rubber stamping’ (Scrivener, 2012) correct language for the purpose. Instead, she directly acknowledges learners and the language they are producing in slightly different ways each time.

Providing Personal Appreciation

 

 

 

 

The second practice Fagan calls “providing personal appreciation” and is seen when Ann responds to more complete language errors. Ann does this in line 10 of the transcript above when she describes a student’s error as “very creative”. While foregrounding achievement focuses on what the student is able to do rather than what they can’t do, providing personal appreciation acknowledges who the student is (an intelligent, engaged, creative person) rather than who they aren’t (a failure for getting something wrong). This personal appreciation imbues correction with interpersonal warmth, rewarding students for “being brave” (another term Ann uses to provide personal appreciation) and encouraging further risk-taking in language exploration. On a personal note, it took me years to make the shift from simply announcing to my learners that ‘errors are good!’ to actively scaffolding my corrective feedback itself with this kind of affirmation.

Some other phrases used by Ann to precipitate correction with personal appreciation include: “that’s really cute”, “we could say that…that could be the new [version of the language item]”, and “that’s a good idea”. Throughout, she continues her use of eye gaze, modified speech, and all the other layered practices bullet-pointed above.

Two Takeaways

Managing corrective feedback

An expert teacher uses many verbal and non-verbal communicative cues which interlock and layer to construct and manage participatory corrective feedback with learner groups in the classroom. When a number of these cues foreground achievement and provide personal appreciation, corrective or “negative” feedback, pervaded by positivity and dialogic space, can facilitate engaging, immediate learning opportunities and encourage future and further participation in language exploration by learners.  

This study and the function of research

In his 1991 book , Michael J. Wallace suggests that “the number and complexity of professional decisions made every working day by teachers is such that they cannot be explained only in terms of the conscious application of specific, taught ‘skills’”. CF is one research area commonly supposed to inform teachers’ practices by conscientiously applying specific skills. This type of emic classroom study is refreshingly different because, as Fagan says, its concern is not so much for generalizability but possibility; avoided is any pretense that practitioners simply apply research findings by transforming external knowledge into internalized skills. Fagan acknowledges that “CF types as categorized in the SLA literature play a role in teacher’s management” but also that by themselves they “do not encompass the entirety of the teacher’s actions”. Recognizing the intricacies of a teacher’s real-time CF turns without reducing each to a preconceived, simple and repeatable feedback type makes the research more pedagogically salient to teachers and illuminates the vital role teachers play in the language learning process, perhaps especially when it appears “student-centered”.

By letting the description of Ann’s practice ‘speak for itself’, this study accords with Dick Allwright’s view of practitioners as “people trying to reach locally helpful understandings, not new knowledge” and appreciation of research which serves them in this. 

Prompts for Discussion/Reflection

• Some teachers (myself included) find transcriptions of classroom discourse engrossing and compelling. Do you read much ELT literature/research involving transcriptions and discourse analysis? (How) do these ‘snapshots’ of classroom interaction in particular inform and/or affect you as a teacher?

• Have you ever recorded and/or transcribed CF episodes in your own class? If so, did you notice any of the same verbal and non-verbal communicative cues surface in how you managed them? If not, which would you imagine you might see the most? 

• Hellermann (2003) found that lower pitch typically signals positive feedback while higher pitch prompts correction. Do you think this is consistent in your own classroom? Try paying attention to just this and find out.

References

Scrivener, J. (2012). Classroom Management Techniques. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lyster, R., & Ranta, L. (2013). Counterpoint piece: the case for variety in corrective feedback research. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 35: 167-184.  

Wallace, M. J., (1991). Training Foreign Language Teachers: A Reflective Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hellermann, J. (2003). The interactive work of prosody in the IRF exchange: teacher repetition in feedback moves. Language in Society, 32, 79-104.

Allwright, D. (2006). Six promising directions in Applied Linguistics. In: Understanding the Language Classroom. Ed. Gieve, S., Miller, E.K. London: Palgrave Macmillan.