0007

charter 8

_rvvards- If tl''^s is just thc right moment to point out a ianguage featurc, we may olfer thun ⁰ j._corieCtion. Provided we ofler this help with tact and discretion, there is no rcason a form o ,^_Krvent;_ons should not be helpful. But however we do it, our correction will be " ^ <    _ti_e>- in other words, we will not stop the whole activity and insist on everyone saying

moie g _correCtiy before being allowed to continue with their disatssion. the_correction can be olfered in a number of ways. We might simply reformulate rident has said in the expectation that thcy will pick up our reformulation (see ^n< wen though it hardly interrupts their speech, e.g.

pageMM>^Ł

Ąnd vthen I go on holiday, I enjoy to ski in the winter and I like to surfin * .'/je summer. Yes, they are my favourites.

Yes, I enjoy skiing, too.

‘ yes, I enjoy skiing.

^ilum‘ ’ _r j_nn't enjoy skiing. It's too cold. What I like is ...

swkht r. i

_ell p.jsiible that when students are making an atteinpt to say something they are not ], is even^ _ref_or[Tiitlatioii or suggcstion may help them to iearn something new.

"^ie ■ '    use a number of other techniąues for showing incorrectness, too, such as echoing

llOli-' ___/    - [----------    tiuuiu i;c.

'' yj¹ "eycr weneed lo be careful of over-correction duringa fluency stage. By constantly the flow of the activity, we may bring it to a standstill. What we have to judge, ^{in er} whether a quick reformulation or a quick prompt may help the conversation

>h^ercfore’ ...................■-

ioii>^{or even} saying I shouldrt’t say X, say V, etc. But because we do it gcntly, and and ex| ^ ^ _n0( m0ve on to a ‘getting it right’ stage, our intervention is less disruptive lietnus- _acctiracy-based procedurę would be.

therefore, is'    ■-----r*—*■“*/ ‘»«P conversation

along without intruding too much or whether, on the contrary, it is not espeeially _altd has the potential to get in the way of the conversation.

move necessary

lingmis^ta'^{ces: we} frequently act as observers, watching and listening to students so ^^eCOr _ _n „j_vc feedback aftcrwards. Such observation allows us to give good feedback to ^t*^iat "^L, .fon how well they have performed, always remembering that we want to give

P¹    ₀f the problems of giving feedback after the event is that it is easy to forget what

^ne h ue said. Most tcachers, therefore, write down points they want to refer to later, and ^{StU Ł} j k’ to use ^ci’^ar,‘^{s or of}i^ler f°rms of categorisation to help them do this, as in Fisure i

Words and phrases ■ Pronunciation	Appropriacy
---L-_____

when they listen or watch, they, too, will be writing down morę and less successful Ianguage performance in categories which make remembering what they heard easier. Another alternative is to divide students into groups and have each group listen or watch for something different. for example, one group might foctts on pronunciation, one group couid listen for the use of appropriate or inappropriate phrases, while a tli i rd looks al thc cffect of the physical paralinguistic features that are used. if teachers want to involvc students morę - especially if they havc been listening to an audiotape or watching a video - they can ask them to write up any mistakes they think they heard on the board. This can lead to a discussion in which the class votes on whether they think the mistakes really are mistakes.

Another possibility is for the teacher to transcribe parts of the recording for futurę study. Howeyer, this takes a lot of time!

« After the event: when we have recorded student performance, we will want to give feedback to the class. We can do this in a number of ways. We might want to give an assessment of an activity, saying how well we thought the students did in it, and getting the students to tell us what they found easiest or most difficult. We can put some of the mistakes we have recorded up on the board and ask students first if they can recognise the problem, and then whether they can put it right.

Alternatively, we can write both correct and incorrect words, phrases or sentences on the board and have tiie students decide which is which.

When we write examples of what we heard on the board, it is not generally a good idea to say who tnade the mistakes sińce this may expose students in front of their classmates. Indecd, we will probably want to concentrate most on those mistakes which were madę by morę than one person. These can then lead on to quick teaching and re-teaching sequences.

Another possibility is for teachers to write individual notes to students, recording mistakes they heard from those particular students with suggestions about where they might look for Information about the Ianguage - in dictionaries, grammar books or on the Internet.

D Feedback on written work

The way we give feedback on writing will depend on the kind of writing task the students have undertaken, and the effect we wish to create. When students do workbook exercises based on controlled testing activities, we will mark their efforts right or wrong, possibly pencilling in the correct answer for them to study. However, when we give feedback on morę creative or communicative writing (whether letters, reports, stories or poems), we will approach the task with circumspection and clearly demonstrate our interest in the content of the students’ work. A lot will depend on whether we are intervening in the writing process (where students are composing various written drafts before producing a finał version - see Chapter 19, Bi), or whether we are marking a finished product. During the writing process we will be responding rather tlian correcting.

D1 Responding

When we respond, we say how the text appears to us and how successful we think it has been (we give a medal, in other words) before suggestiijg how it couid be improved (the mission). Such responses are vital at variousstages of the writing process cyde fsee page 326). The

I Graminar

■Mi

147

1

jijjnn we can notę down things we hcard, whether the)’ were particularly good or In eac • ^ jnappropriate. We might write down errors such as *according to my opinion in in^C0IT nis and phrases coluntn, or */ haven’t been yesterdayin the grammar column; we might the ^_oIieine problems or stress issues in the pronunciation column and make a notę of ^recor where students disagreed too tentatively or bluntly in the appropriacy column.

^ ^J\y ' an also ^recor<* ^s,udents’ Ianguage performance with audio or video recorders. In this •ju tion the students might be asked to design their own charts like thc one above so that