What is Feedback?
Feedback is a central concept in language teaching. Our students’ language
development occurs through communication, and all communication is predicated
on the concept of feedback.
How Is Communicative Feedback Related to Corrective Feedback?
Keep this definition of feedback in mind for the next conversation as we lean into the
concept of feedback as a part of a teacher’s assessment practices. In
communication, feedback indicates to the Sender that the message was received
and moves the conversation further along. Now, imagine a classroom setting in
which a student sends a message in the target language, perhaps trying to express
that they enjoy pizza for dinner, and the instructor responds, “The subject and verb
of your sentence do not agree.”
unfocused feedback, you correct everything you see. This level of feedback can
be exhausting for the teacher, overwhelming for the students, and, fun fact, some
research on this kind of feedback shows that teachers often give unnecessary or
even incorrect feedback when they try to correct everything. On the other hand,
with focused feedback, you decide prior to reading student work what kinds of
errors matter enough to point out, then you only give feedback on those errors.
implicit feedback. This is feedback that we give as part of the conversation, to
clarify misunderstandings or address errors while moving communication forward.
On the other hand, explicit feedback involves letting the speaker know that they
have committed an error, often followed by a metalinguistic explanation of the error
and/or how to fix it.
Error Correction
The question about when to provide feedback only *in the communicative sense*
and when to correct errors in form has been the source of much debate among
teachers and researchers in language education. In 1978, James Hendrickson
battled against the prevailing beliefs in the field, namely that communication was like
virtue, and errors were like sin to be weeded out immediately lest they grow and spoil
the entire utterance.
The Consensus on Error Correction
1) Error correction helps reduce near-future errors in performance.
There are studies that demonstrate that focused, explicit error correction related to
specific forms helps prevent students from making those same errors in near-future
assignments under the same testing conditions.
2) Some kinds of error correction may also have unintended effects.
Another thing to keep in mind is the effect error correction can have on
communication, such as in the example I gave earlier where the teacher halted a
communicative event to give corrective feedback on verb conjugations.
3.) Error correction seems to be more beneficial for more advanced students.
Novice and intermediate speakers and writers get less from error correction than
advanced students. At the earlier levels, students’ brains are busy building an entire
new language system from the ground up.
4) Error correction’s benefits must be weighed against the amount of
instructor and student time and focus they require.
Think about the goals for your classroom. My goals for my novice students include
getting lots of interesting input, engaging in authentic communication with me and
with peers, and developing increased intercultural competence and a willingness to
communicate across difference.
5) Acting on error correction improves its effectiveness.
Written error correction is only useful if students are reading the teacher’s corrections
and using them to correct/revise the work. Since students only tend to correct/revise
when required to as part of the class, teachers might consider giving the error
correction on an early draft of the assignment that students are required to correct
and resubmit.
6) Students may feel better when they are getting error correction, whether or
not it helps.
One interesting finding in research across a range of disciplines, not just in second
language acquisition, is that students often report preferring a strong teacher
presence, error correction, and a clear path to success.
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