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THE IMPORTANCE OF ERROR CORRECTION AND EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK IN
LANGUAGE TEACHING
Shakhnoza Turgunboeva
Student of Uzbekistan State
World Languages University
Mobile phone number: +998949236792
E-mail:shakhnozabaxtiyarovna@gmail.com
Umurqulova G.I.
Scientific advisor: Mobile phone number: +998 90 988 14 92
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15294512
Abstract:
This thesis examines the process of giving effective feedback to the students
after various types of assessment and its impact on students’ future progress. Furthermore,
the most famous types of feedback, their benefits and drawbacks, choosing the most
appropriate option according to the situation and level of students will be discussed.
Key words:
teacher correction, peer correction, self-correction, immediate and delayed
feedback.
It widely known that teaching and learning process is not only about introducing new
topics and reviewing them. There are other parts of every lesson, which includes assessment,
correction and feedback. Each skillful and experienced teacher should choose appropriate
assessment type according to the students’ level, age, interest and preferences. After finding
strengths and weak points teacher should work on them carefully, that leads next step error
correction and feedback. However it is not easy process, which demands using effective
strategies to make student more motivated and interested in this field. So, that means paying
attention to this peculiarities also important part of every effective teaching process.
“Mastering a foreign language involves making mistakes and errors, hence feedback and
error correction is an integral part of any foreign language classroom” (Bakan et al., 2020: 9).
Giving feedback and correcting errors is a crucial aspect of teaching and learning, especially in
an English language classroom. Providing meaningful and constructive feedback can help
students make improvements, increase their motivation, and boost their confidence. At the
same time, giving ineffective or harmful feedback can cause students to become discouraged
or demotivated. “It is important, therefore, to make sure that the feedback we give is
appropriate to the students concerned and to the activity they are involved in, and that we
recognise feedback as a crucial part of learning process” (Harmer, 2011: 137).
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There are several techniques that can be used to correct errors effectively in the
classroom. However, teachers should keep in mind that giving feedback and correcting errors
can be the most delicate aspects of foreign language teaching. Hence, it is vital for teachers to
establish a set of principles that will help them decide on types of errors and situations that
require corrective feedback as well as techniques that can be used (Bakan et al., 2020)
The tutors in this program identified a number of challenges.
Adapting and Catering to Individual Needs
One of the greatest concerns for the tutors was adapting their feedback to varied
proficiency levels. In general, the tutors reported having more difficulty with weaker students
because they often had to read the text several times in order to understand it. Then they had
to choose not only which errors to focus on and which corrective strategy to use, but also had
to decide how to address complex linguistic features with simple explanations that the
learners would understand. In addition, tutors who were determined to personalize their CF
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found it difficult to isolate exactly which linguistic feature to focus on in order to help the
learner improve. Another issue was the tutors’ concern that if they did not correct all the
mistakes, the learners might think that what they had written was accurate, and they would
retain these forms permanently. Some tutors feared that more advanced students, who were
aware that they had made a mistake without necessarily knowing how to fix it, would judge
them as incompetent or lazy if they had not flagged the error.
Diagnosing Errors
Correctly diagnosing the categories of error presented a challenge for some tutors, who
reported spending considerable time and energy reading their grammar books. Tutors were
also afraid of making mistakes themselves, of not understanding what the student meant, or
of not providing accurate grammatical explanations. As Myhill (2000) noted, most second-
language teachers are neither grammarians nor linguists, and their metalinguistic knowledge
is sometimes partial or tentative. For example, the learners made many errors with the base
form of verbs: either they omitted the to, as in “I love swim,” which mirrors the French
structure “J’aime nager,” or they replaced the to with for, as infinitives in French can be
preceded by the preposition pour, which in most cases accurately translates as for. The tutors
did not always know how to categorize these errors: they flagged them variously as errors in
prepositions, lexis, or verb forms.
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Fear of Discouraging the Learners
Several tutors feared the effects of the “red pen” on their learners’ motivation; they also
worried about hurting the learners’ feelings and damaging their self-esteem. As a result, they
opted for selective corrections, but did not always know which errors should have been the
focus of attention. A few tutors candidly admitted flagging errors that “annoyed” them, such as
spelling mistakes or punctuation. Others focused on repetitive errors or errors that hindered
communication, which, intuitively seemed to be exactly the right course of action. But they
also feared, as mentioned above, that errors ignored would become permanent features of the
learners’ language repertoire.
Maintaining Motivation
The issue of time and lack of improvement in the learners’ writing over the semester
were mentioned by several tutors as factors that reduced their motivation to provide
feedback. Although the tutors had interacted with only three or four students, the time
needed to reflect on the learners’ proficiency level and capacity to self-correct became a major
deterrent to personalizing their feedback. This also led them to assume that in the future,
individualizing their feedback would not be a practice that they could realistically adopt, as a
typical teaching load at the high school level is six groups of 30 students. The tutors who were
paired, strictly by chance, with both low-proficiency and more advanced learners could not
help but compare and question why some learners did not seem to respond to feedback. Some
reported that not seeing much improvement in the learners, nor evidence of interest in
improving their writing, had a significant effect on their own motivation to spend more time
and effort providing feedback. This experience of providing CF to learners over a period
heightened the tutors’ awareness of the complexity of this pedagogical task and led them to
reflect on the practices that they would like to adopt in the future to turn the CF challenge into
a positive teaching and learning experience for both themselves and the learners. The survival
tips presented below emerged from conversations with the tutors and I hope will prove useful
to all teachers who are about to embark on―or are already engaged in―the corrective
feedback adventure.
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Approaches to Error Correction
Immediate vs. Delayed Correction
Immediate:
Done right after the error is made – often in speaking.
Delayed
: Discussed later – often in writing or group feedback.
Explicit vs. Implicit Correction
Explicit
:
Directly stating the error and providing the correction.
Example:
You said "He go." It should be "He goes."
Implicit
:
Hints or prompts to encourage self-correction.
Example:
He go...?
(rising intonation suggests error)
Techniques of Error Correction
Recasting
– Rephrasing the learner's utterance correctly without direct correction.
Learner:
She go to market.
Teacher:
Oh, she goes to the market.
Elicitation
– Asking the learner to reformulate their error.
Repetition
– Repeating the incorrect sentence with emphasis on the error.
Clarification requests
– Asking for clarification to signal something is wrong.
Peer correction
– Encouraging classmates to help correct.
Self-correction
– Encouraging learners to notice and fix their own errors.
Factors Affecting Error Correction
Age of learners
– Young learners benefit from gentle, indirect correction.
Proficiency level
– Beginners may need more explicit correction.
Learning goals
– Accuracy-focused classes (e.g., exam prep) may use more correction.
Classroom environment
– A supportive, non-threatening atmosphere aids learning.
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Numerous studies have shown the importance of establishing and maintaining a positive
atmosphere while correcting mistakes and providing feedback. Providing feedback that is
above all else effective is a cornerstone of English learning. Teachers should give positive
feedback with facial gestures, hand gestures or verbal comments. Mistakes and errors serve
as the main tools for growth and learning both inside and outside of the classroom. Thus,
developing strategies that help correct errors is vital to this process. Error correction is a
highly complex process and in specific cases requires various strategies for correction. How to
utilize it depends primarily on the types of errors. Fossilized errors for instance require a
unique approach due to their nature and frequency. Delayed error correction is also an
important technique to implement in the classroom as it helps reduce interruptions and
increase focus. Ultimately, these strategies can be utilized to develop a more individualized
approach to ensure students feel supported in their learning.
References:
Используемая литература:
Foydalanilgan adabiyotlar:
1.
Error correction and feedback. Jorge Torres Almazбn.2015y.
2.
Feedback and error correction in English language teaching. Svitlana Sabat, Ruslana
Lutsiv. 2023y.
3.
The effects of teacher, peer and self-feedback on error correction with corpus use.
Yoshiho Satake. 2024 y.
4.
The Pedagogy of Error Correction: Surviving the Written Corrective Feedback Challenge.
Danielle Guénette. 2012y.
