I watched Cecilia Lemos‘s talk on Oral Error Correction: Reflections from a recovering re-caster at IATEFL online.
Cecilia starts her talk saying that she did her Teachers’Training back 20 years ago while The Communicative Approach was the main method to apply in our classes. And I know exactly was she means as I studied teaching during those times.
Then, she explains why she became a recaster as a way to provide some kind of correction. So If a students said: “I didn’t went“, she approached error correction by recasting, “Oh, you didn’t go, really? And where did you go?”.
How do we correct students?
- Asking for a clarification request
- Echoing
- Eliciting
- Using body language
- Reformulating
Then, Cecilia says that now when students make a mistakes, she corrects them right there on the spot. So if a student comes up with “I didn’t went”, she says “No, that’s not correct”, and proceeds to make corrections, of course always giving sources which back up the reasons for the correction.
She conducted an experiment during a semester with two groups of her students:
Group 1: She used recasting for error correction
Group 2: She used direct correction
And her conclusions show that students would were in the second group performed much better soon, and then in the their final tests.
She also says that we cannot expect that learning will happen magically (as Jim Scrivener also makes clear in his Demand High). Effective learning has to do with learning about goals and correct language.
“Now, I am confident enough to start direct correction” – Cecilia Lemos
Does she correct students all the time?
No. She says that during the first minutes of a class, especially during an ice breaker she wouldn’t correct students, as it is a moment to start speaking (I wouldn’t correct students during this stage either, it’s also a moment when they are switching from a 1st language context into the English language context. What I would do is, I might note down if a student makes a mistake important enough, that the message has not been clear, or in case I notice there’s some important Grammar, or vocabulary issue that needs remedial work)
Thank you Cecilia for this great talk, now I am also confident to start direct correction.