Techniques for Giving Feedback
1- You should interrupt learners when they make a mistake or error when:
– You want learners to be accurate concerning new structures.
– The majority of learners are constantly making the same error.
2- You can give delayed feedback in the following situation:
– If the aim of the activity is fluency and communication. Make a note of errors and correct them later on.
3- Some errors should remain uncorrected by the teacher, for example:
– In the middle of a group work or role play.
– When a shy learner is daring to communicate.
– If a learner is trying to express a complex or personal idea.
4- You correct learners in different ways according to the tasks given, for example:
– During fluency activities, errors are totally ignored.
– If the aim is accuracy, you might correct more frequently.
5- You vary your correction strategies according to learners’ personalities by:
– Correcting shy learners less, and encouraging them to communicate.
– Correcting stronger learners more, so they are challenged.
6- You help learners to self-correct or correct each other’s errors by:
– Making a gesture, stopping learners, giving a question.
– Indicating to the nature of the error, by saying e.g. past tense.
– Stressing the incorrect form.
– Repeating the sentence with a questioning intonation.
– Asking other learners for the correct form.
– Asking one of the learners to write errors and correct them at the end of activity.
7- Some advantages of self-correction and peer correction:
– You know how much learners do and do not know.
– Learners feel more confident and independent.
– Learners know where they are.
8- Some disadvantages of self-correction and peer correction:
– Some learners might feel superior to others.
– The same two or three brilliant learners might answer and dominate the class interactions. The one who is corrected might feel frustrated.
9- Some practical ways of giving feedback on written work:
– Dotting errors and asking learners to correct them / using correction symbols.
– Providing correct answers for learners / correcting specific errors and leaving others.
– Getting learners to exchange their copies / praising learners’ writing for its strength.