Correction Techniques Thornbury

Responding to What options has the teacher got when faced with a student’s error?
Let’s
errors imagine that, in the course of classroom activity, a student has been
describing a person’s appearance and said:
He has a long hair.
Here are some possible responses that the teacher might consider:
1 No. This is clearly negative feedback, but it offers the student no clue as
to what was wrong. The teacher may be assuming that the student has
simply made a slip under pressure, and that this does not therefore
represent a lack of knowledge of the rule. The learner should therefore
be able to self-correct. There are, of course, other ways of signalling that
a mistake has been made without having to say No. A facial expression,
shake of the head etc, might work just as well. Some teachers try to
soften the negative force of no by, for example, making a mmmm noise
to indicate: Well, that’s not entirely correct but thanks anyway.
Unfortunately, this may leave the student wondering Have I made a
mistake or haven’t I?
2 He has long hair. This is a correction in the strictest sense of the word. The
teacher simply repairs the student’s utterance – perhaps in the interest
of maintaining the flow of the talk, but at the same time, reminding the
learner not to focus only on meaning at the expense of form.
3 No article. The teacher’s move is directed at pinpointing the kind of

error the student has made in order to prompt self-correction, or, if that
fails, peer-correction – when learners correct each other. This is where
metalanguage (the use of grammatical terminology) comes in handy:
words like article, preposition, verb, tense etc. provide an economical
means of giving feedback – assuming, of course, that students are
already familiar with these items.
4 No. Anyone? An unambiguous feedback signal plus an invitation for

peer-correction. By excluding the option of self-correction, however,
the teacher risks humiliating the original student: perhaps the teacher
knows the student well enough to rule out self-correction for this error.
5 He has...? In other words, the teacher is replaying the student’s utter-

ance up to the point where the error occurred, with a view to isolating
the error as a clue for self-correction. This technique can be reinforced
by finger-coding, where the teacher marks out each word on her
fingers, indicating with her fingers the part of the phrase or sentence
that needs repair.
6 He has a long hair? Another common teacher strategy is to echo the

mistake but with a quizzical intonation. This is perhaps less threatening
than saying No, but often learners fail to interpret this as an invitation
to self-correct, and think that the teacher is simply questioning the
truth of what they have just said. They might then respond Yes, he has a
very long hair. Down to here.
7 I’m sorry, I didn’t understand. Variations on this response include Sorry?

He what? Excuse me? etc. These are known as clarification requests
and, of course, occur frequently in real conversation. As a correction
device they signal to the student that the meaning of their message is
unclear, suggesting that it may have been distorted due to some
problem of form. It is therefore a more friendly way of signalling a
mistake. Research suggests that when learners re-cast their message
after receiving a clarification request, it usually tends to improve, despite
their not having been told explicitly that a mistake has been made,
much less what kind of mistake it was. This suggests that the policy of
‘acting a bit thick’ (on the part of the teacher) might have positive
dividends in terms of self-correction.
8 Just one? Like this? [draws a bald man with one long hair] Ha ha ... The
teacher has pretended to interpret the student’s utterance literally, in
order to show the student the unintended effect of the error, on the
principle that, once the student appreciates the difference between he has
long hair and he has a long hair he will be less likely to make the same
mistake again. This is possible only with those mistakes which do make
a difference in meaning – such as he’s lower in the text we started with.
There is, of course the danger of humiliating the student, but, if
handled sensitively, this kind of feedback can be extremely effective.
9 A long hair is just one single hair, like you find in your soup. For the hair on
your head you wouldn’t use an article: He has long hair . The teacher uses
the error to make an impromptu teaching point. This is an example of
reactive teaching, where instruction is in response to students’ errors
rather than trying to pre-empt them. Of course, if the teacher were to
do this at every mistake, the classes would not only become very
teacher-centred, but the students might become reluctant to open their
mouths.
10 Oh, he has long hair, has he? This technique (sometimes called
reformulation) is an example of covert feedback, disguised as a
conversational aside. The hope is, that the student will take the veiled
correction on board but will not be inhibited from continuing the flow
of talk. Typically, this is the way parents seem to correct their children
– by offering an expanded version of the child’s utterance:
CHILD: Teddy hat.
MOTHER: Yes, Teddy’s got a hat on, hasn’t he?
Some theorists argue that these expansions and reformulations help

provide a temporary scaffold for the child’s developing language
competence. The problem is that learners may simply not recognise the
intention nor notice the difference between their utterance and the
teacher’s reformulation.
11 Good. Strange as this seems, it is in fact a very common way that teachers
provide feedback on student production, especially in activities where the
focus is more on meaning than on form. For example, it is not difficult to
imagine a sequence like this:
TEACHER: What does Mick Jagger look like?
STUDENT: He has a long hair.
TEACHER: Good. Anything else?
STUDENT: He has a big lips.
TEACHER: Good
etc.
The intention behind good (or any of its alternatives, such as OK) is to
acknowledge the students’ contribution, irrespective of either its accuracy
or even of its meaning. But, if construed as positive feedback, it may lull
learners into a false sense of security, and worse, initiate the process of
fossilisation.
Teacher says nothing but writes down error for future reference. The
12 intention here is to postpone the feedback so as not to disrupt the flow
of talk, but to deal with errors later. Perhaps the students are working
in groups and the teacher has chanced on the error while monitoring.
A correction in this context might be inappropriate. Nevertheless, there
are some grounds to believe that the most effective feedback is that
which occurs in what are called real operating conditions, that is, when
the learner is using the language communicatively. For example, a trainee
driver is more likely to notice the correction when it is most relevant –
while driving – then after the event, in a list of points being ticked off
by the driving instructor. The trick, it seems, is to intervene without
interfering. From “How to Teach Grammar” by Scott Thornbury, CUP

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Responding to What options has the teacher got when faced with a student’s error?

3 No article. The teacher’s move is directed at pinpointing the kind of

4 No. Anyone? An unambiguous feedback signal plus an invitation for

5 He has...? In other words, the teacher is replaying the student’s utter-

6 He has a long hair? Another common teacher strategy is to echo the

7 I’m sorry, I didn’t understand. Variations on this response include Sorry?

Some theorists argue that these expansions and reformulations help

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