Module 8: Error and Error Correction

Google: drive, docs, pub

I chose the technique of “Only praising for good language use”.  

There were several reasons for this.  Firstly, I was teaching a writing class, so I needed a technique that could be used with written work.  Also, it was one of the few techniques on the list that I had not yet tried.  Moreover, this was a technique that still allowed me to give students lots of feedback on their writing (something that is an expectation of both the university and the students).   Finally, because the task involved collaborative writing, I thought that it would be useful to the students if I highlighted the good language.  It would not only be a reaffirmation to the student who produced the language, but it would also be a signal to the rest of the group that this was useful language for them to learn. 

Another reason for choosing this technique is because I know praising student language is a weak point of mine.  A class had recently complained to me that I never praised them. 

Because this was an online class, the students did their writing task on a Google Doc, which I monitored and made comments as they wrote.  The students had become so accustomed to me using the comment feature to note errors that as soon as they saw me highlighting parts of their text, they immediately started trying to re-write it before they even saw my comment.  It took a while before they realized I was giving positive feedback.  Perhaps I should have let the students know beforehand that I was using a new technique.

I did, however, tell the students at the end of the class what I had been doing, and asked them for their feedback.  Six students responded with a “thumbs-up” in the chat, which I interpreted as approval.  Only two students gave more detailed feedback.  One student wrote, “I think it is very useful because it helps me to find more good language which can be used in the future.”  The other student wrote, “You should address our mistakes for us to improve, too”.

From my perspective, what troubled me the most about this technique was that there were some big structural problems with two of the student essays, and I really wanted to give feedback on this because essay structure will be part of their grade on the final assessment.  So it was painful for me not to address this.  (Although, upon reflection, maybe I could have addressed organizational issues.  Perhaps the phrase “only praising for good language use” is intended to be for language issues only.)

Another issue is that one of the groups left me with very little to praise.  Not a single sentence was correctly formed.  Albeit the reason for this was because they were experimenting with complex language, so I guess I could have praised their effort.  I also praised some of their vocabulary choices. However, the other three groups left me with plenty to praise in terms of both grammar and collocations.

Overall, I found the “only” in this technique to be too restrictive.  While I definitely need to incorporate more praise into my feedback, I would also like the freedom to be able to address major issues when I notice them.