【abstract】error correction not only involves learners’ linguistic competence, but also their affect, which plays a crucial part in language acquisition. based on psycholinguistic interactionist theory and social interactionist theory, the present research aims to explore the strategies for supportive error correction in college efl classroom, which help the students’ language learning by correcting their errors and providing positive support to students’ affect as well.

【key words】classroom interaction;error correction;affect

1. introduction

research on classroom sla shows that teacher-student interaction creates optimum environments to act on learners’ internal mechanisms and therefore facilitates l2 learning (long, 1996；swain, 1995). feedback, as an important part of classroom interaction, is provided by the teacher to make evaluations of and give comments on students’ performance. the present paper focuses on error correction, which specifically refers to teachers’ feedback to students’ errors.

research has demonstrated that error correction is a quite complicated issue. on the one hand, it works for language learning by the assumption of calling learners’ attention to the differences between their interlanguage and target language, but on the other hand, the frequent error correction by the teacher may create a sense of failure and frustration among students. to break through this dilemma, the present research attempts to explore the strategies for supportive error correction, which help the students’ learning by correcting their errors and providing positive support to students’affect as well. the research is based on two related but different types of interactionist theories: psycholinguistic interactionist theory, which explains the relationship between error correction and language acquisition; and social interactionist theory, which focuses on error correction and the learners’affect.

2. theories

2.1 psycholinguistic interactionist theories

one of the most influential hypotheses concerned with the relationship between interaction and learners’ linguistic needs is long’s interaction hypothesis (ih). the early version of ih (1985) is closely associated with krashen’s (1985) input hypothesis which claims that comprehensible input is one of the key elements in second or foreign language development. in 1996, long offers his revised version of ih, which highlights the contribution of the learners’ internal mechanisms, negotiation and negative evidence to l2 learning.

according to ih, interaction can contribute to acquisition through the provision of negative evidence and through opportunities for modified output. as error correction “constitutes attempt to supply ‘negative evidence’ in the form of feedback that draws learners’ attention to the error they have made” (ellis, 1994: 584), it can thereby trigger learners’ internal mechanisms, which may further result in modified output. swain’s (1985, 1995) output hypothesis identifies the functions of output where accuracy is concerned. it helps learners to notice the gap between what they want to say and what they can say and enables learners to test out hypotheses about the target language. one way in which this occurs is through the modified output that learners produce following error correction.

2.2 social interactionist theories

social interactionist theories advance the role of interaction on l2 acquisition with respect to affective and cognitive environments which are helpful to learners’ second language development. the key construct in interactionist theories is mediation, which refers to “the part played by other significant people in the learners’ lives, who enhance their learning by selecting and shaping the learning experiences presented to them”. (williams & burden, 2000: 40). for vygotsky and his followers, the means of mediation can be a system of symbols, notably language, so in language classrooms, the mediation can take the form of conversational interaction which includes teacher error correction or various other kinds of teacher assistance.

through mediation, learners are able to transform skills that lie in the zone of proximal development (zpd, a terminology developed by vygotsky (1978) to refer to the area of learners’ potential development). according to social interactionist theories, the functions of mediation are initially performed in collaborating with others, typically through interacting with some other person, and then are subsequently performed independently. one way in which it occurs in l2 acquisition is through instructional interaction which provides scaffolding. at one level, scaffolding serves as the means by which teacher assists learners to produce linguistic forms that lie outside their existing competence. furthermore, it refers more broadly to the social, cognitive and affective support that interactants afford each other.

wood, bruner and ross (1976) identify the following features of scaffolding:

1.recruiting interest in the task

2.simplifying the task

3.maintaining pursuit of the goal

4.marking critical features and discrepancies between what has been produced and the ideal solution

5.controlling frustration during problem solving

6.demonstrating an idealized version of the act to be performed.

3. method

as exploratory practice, which language teachers conduct in their own classrooms to understand the areas of language teaching and learning that they wish to explore（allwright,1997）, the present study on supportive error-correction is conducted by the author as an english teacher in her own classroom. to provide error correction in an effective and non-threatening way, a number of theoretically grounded error-correction strategies were adopted in practice to examine whether and how the strategies used give supportive effect both in students’ affect and their language learning.

the participants for this study included the author and the students in a college efl classroom. the students were second-year non-english majors. most of them have learned english for seven to nine years, so they were regarded as intermediate english learners.

the present study mainly used audio-recording to collect the data. the college english lesson in the author’s own class was audio-recorded for one term and the error-correction part was transcribed and analyzed. although the students were aware of recording, i told them it was only for the purpose of my research and would not be used for judging or grading their performance in classroom, so there was no stressful influence on the classroom atmosphere or students’ performance.

4. results and discussion

the strategies i adopted mainly serve two purposes: first, to help the students notice and correct their errors; second, to encourage and support the students in affect. four basic strategies were proved to be beneficial for l2 learning in my classroom:

a. the “sandwich” method can create a positively affective environment for error correction

“sandwich” is a metaphor for the “positive – negative –positive” method. positive feedbacks are provided before and after negative feedback to create a warm climate for error correction in classroom and encourage students to produce more output without fear of making errors.

excerpt 1

1.t: …and wasn’t the slightest bit shy, not the slightest, what does it mean here? can you guess? f2, please.

2.f2: [silence]

3.t: it means i was shy or not shy?

4.f2: i don’t know.

5.t: ok, i think the phrase is a little bit complicated for you, but can you guess its meaning from the context? “i was bragging and i wasn’t the slightest bit shy or self-restrained”, do you remember the meaning of “brag”?

6.f2: talk something big .

7.t: good, the meaning is right, but please don’t add “something”, it is a fixed phrase here, talk big.

8.f2: talk big.

9.t: good, exactly, so if someone likes to talk big, is he a shy person or not?

10.f2: not shy.

11.t: ok, very good. and here, “not the slightest bit” contains the negative meaning “ not at all”, so “not the slightest bit shy” means

12.f2: not shy at all.

13.t: exactly. so you see you are capable of guessing the unfamiliar words form the context! and next time when you meet some difficult words in reading, just try this way, ok?

14.f2: ok.

in excerpt 1, when the student made an error (turn 6), i first acknowledged that “good, the meaning is right”, then i corrected her errors to remind her of the difference between her hypothesis and target language (turn 7). after she realized the gap (turn 8), i gave her a positive feedback to reinforce the correct one as well as to prevent her form being discouraged by the negative feedback before (turn 9).

besides, the whole process of excerpt 1 can be regarded as a “positive- negative-positive” one: when the student failed to answer the questions for twice, i helped her to control the frustration by telling her it was due to the complexity of the phrase rather than her english level (turn 5) , then i scaffolded her to overcome the difficulty by providing her more clues (turns 5, 7, 9, 11), and at last i gave her the praise to encourage her to try this way to solve the problem by herself in the future. therefore, the supportive feedbacks in the whole process created a positively affective environment for the students to produce the correct answer, develop cognition and become more confident in solving the problem independently in the future.

another method to avoid the negative effect of error correction is to provide error correction in an implicit way.

b. implicit but tactic correction of students’ errors can avoid negative effect while helping l2 learning.

as mentioned above, too many negative evaluations can lead to the frustration among students and influence their efforts to attempt revision of their production, so the teacher may correct the errors in a more implicit way to withhold overt negative evaluation of linguistic form. for example,

excerpt 2

1.t: do you have any wishes on your birthday today?

2.f15: yes, i wish i will pass pass cet-6.

3.t: ok, you wish you would [stressed and paused], pass cet-6. good, ambitious. what else?

4.f15 i wish, i would be happy everyday.

5.t: ok, that’s very good, i hope so, happy birthday and happy everyday.

6.f15: thank you.

this example is a teacher correction in an implicit way, in which i corrected the student’s error by recast, that is, i repeated her original meaning with changed form (turn 3) and i responded to the content (by saying “good” and “ambitious” in turn3),withholding the explicit comment on the grammatical form. this implicit correct proved to be effective in this example: the student produced the correct response (turn 5). while reformulating the students utterance (turn 3), i stressed the changed part to get the student to notice the gap between her interlanguage form and the target form, and gave a positive feedback for the content of her utterance to prevent the student from feeling frustrated at her attempt to use the target language. after that, i asked “what else” to get her to produce more utterance within the similar topic, which actually gave her opportunity to modify her utterance. through this supportive way, the interaction was sustained and the student was encouraged to modify her ‘transitional’ rules of her developing grammar, which would facilitate her language learning and enhance her affect as well.

besides the teacher-correction method, teacher can also ask students to correct their own errors.

c. the teacher plays an important role as scaffolder to encourage students to correct their own errors.

by encouraging students to correct errors by themselves, teacher can invite students’ active participation in the problem solving process so that students will produce more output and feel more confident in controlling of their errors. during this process, teacher plays a crucial role because they have to assist the students’ self-correcting in an appropriate way. teachers can ask students to correct the errors in an explicit but non-threatening way or they can achieve by some implicit methods. one common way for indirect method is simply asking the students to repeat his or her own utterance. however, sometimes the general questioning will not elicit the correct one, so the teacher needs to act as a “scaffolder” by indicating the location or the nature of the error. excerpt 3 shows teacher’s indication through a half-said sentence.

excerpt 3

1.t: what's your new year's resolution?

2.m13: i hope i can pass all the exams.

3.t: ok, good, what else?

4.m13: then second, en.. i , i will try my best to let our class become, become more and more better .

5.t: what?

6.m13: en, as a monitor, i think i will try best to let our class become more and more better.

7.t: become more and more

8.m13: better, oh. no, er, better and better.

in this example, the student failed to correct the error at first ( turn 6) as he took my implicit correction (turn 5) for making the meaning clearly. so i scaffolded him to locate the error by repeating part of his wrong utterance. then through his own repetition of the rest of the error, he noticed the difference between his erroneous form and the target form and finally modified his speech by himself. 

the teacher can also indicate the nature of the error made to help the students to notice the gap, for example, in excerpt 3, the teacher could also tell the student “here should be the subjunctive mood” to ask the students to correct the error.

d. students’ individualities and zpd should be concerned

so far as concerned, different methods of error correction scaffolds students linguistically and affectively in their language performance. however, teachers should also take students’ individualities into consideration when they decide which method is the appropriate to choose.

for example, the positive feedbacks in “sandwich” method are especially useful for low-achieving students and shy students; but it is also easily devalued through overuse for some students. as ur (1996, 248) points out, learners have different opinions on feedback, “a teacher correction that seems to an observer a humiliating ‘put-down’ may not be perceived as such by the learner to whom it was addressed; or an apparently gentle, tactful one may give offence.”

while adopting the implicit correction strategies, teachers also have to be careful to consider students’ individualities and zdp. for example, f15 in excerpt 2 is an introvert, careful and sensitive girl who works hard in english and usually performs well in classroom. so recast was appropriately used here to create a comfortable environment for her, in which she could quickly “notice” the information in my feedback and her cognition was successfully activated. but in another case, a lower-achieving student just ignored my recast, just as follows:

excerpt 4

1.t: what did you do in the party?

2.f1: we danced and we we drink.

3.t: you drank? really? that's crazy.

4.f1:yes, and we eat a lot.

though i gave a recast in turn 3, the student seemed not to have noticed it, as she continued with another turn containing the same error. this result is consistent with the results of the studies by some researchers (e.g. mackey & philp, 1998) who suggest that recasts may allow more advanced learners to infer negative evidence but may pass unnoticed by less advanced learners. according to vygotsky (1978), the extent to which mediation can facilitate learning is constrained by learner’s zpd. therefore, teachers should give students appropriate ways concerning their zpd and individualities. for example, teachers can provide more assistance for students who find it hard to correct errors by themselves and sometimes even use explicit but supportive teacher-correction to simplify the task and ease their cognitive processing pressure. for students who are capable of self-correction, teachers can encourage them to apply the rule they’ve learned to correct their own errors, thus finally “enable them to become independent thinkers and problem-solvers” (williams & burden, 2000: 68).

5. conclusion

error correction not only involves learners’ linguistic competence, but also their affect, which plays a crucial part in language acquisition. therefore, teachers should adopt appropriate strategies to create a supportive environment for error correction. the results of the research will hopefully shed light on future pedagogical decisions and improvements for error correction to play a more effective and facilitative role in learners’ language acquisition and their affect in general.

 

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