Week 8

 

Over the fast years, I have comes the importance of feedback and its astonishing potential when it comes to learning an L2. But on the other side, it also poses difficulties in deciding when, how, and who will treat deviation.  As we know, both none and excessive feedback can impede the language development.  In his chapter, Brown makes a distinction between two types of errors, global and local. He states that global errors need to be treated because it leads to incomprehensible utterance. He also provides a model for treatment of classroom speech errors, which provides teachers with the equipment in deciding if correction is needed and how. While preparing for this week’s class, I could not stop thinking about the conversation I have with my cousin. (He recently moved from Cameroon to California. While at home, he studied English and became fluent).  We made a goal that at least once a week we would attempt to have a full conversation in English (which has proven to be hard). The issue I have during our conversation relates to the topic of feedback. Because my cousin is older than I, I am reluctant to directly bring to his attention his errors. Therefore I decided to use recast. I assumed using such method would correct the errors in his language while still keeping him as the authority figure.  Over time, I still ponder over the question, “is he noticing my feedback”. For example, when I would recast his sentence, he agrees with me, but he would repeat the error form of the sentence with confidence. So what I naturally do is continue with the conversation. Another issue I noticed in our conversation is that I have this urge/tendency to correct as much errors as I can during our conversation. In my viewpoint, the purpose of our conversation is so that he can improve his English. So for the most part, the conversation is filled with, clarification requests, which are good because it involves negotiation of meaning.  Now reflecting on our conversation, I realized that I have been putting too much emphasis on both global and local errors instead of global. Although the purpose of our conversation is to provide meaningful interaction, it should not mean that I must correct every deviant utterance, especially when it is comprehensible. With this week’s reading, I realized that correcting an individual is not as easy as I perceived (or as I have been doing). Before providing feedback, I should employ critical thinking in how, when, and why I provide feedback to my cousin and my future students, not just for the simple fact that it is wrong.

The second part of the reading focuses on meaningful interaction. Meaningful interaction “increases the possibility of input becoming available” (Kumar 101). A concept I gained from the reading is that fact that students benefit more when the topic is chosen by them. There is a lot on emphasis on teachers to choose topic that is appealing for the students, but this can be a hard decision because this involves guessing. But if the topic comes from the students, it is guarantee that it will spark conversation among the learners. For example, the plumbing lesson derived from a student personal experience. During the lesson, the student in Miss Dolores’ class showed interest and work hard in solving each problem. I can see this exact example during my conversation with my cousin. When we talk about home, he is very motivated and could talk about it the entire conversation. Her classroom is a perfect example of what Brown describes as an ideational activity. Her classroom topic makes connections between her students and the world.  The story of Miss Dolores inspired me, if a teacher with no degree in ELL background is capable of creating such type of community how much more I. I believe Miss Dolores and her class is a perfect example of how all classes in the world should resemble.