Here's another of my "Journal" entries, its a bit heavy if you're not into academic styles of journal writing, but it's what I spend these days working on (ok so this one I did in the last 3 hours hehe) and you might find it interesting as I reflect on the ways I taught English in China 2009-2010
Communicative
Competence and Feedback
In
teaching learners of English in China, I generally focus on teaching
communication and comprehension, and the strategies for error correction I use
are based on feedback. By creating units of lessons where the primary focus is
on the stages of communicative competence (Brown, 2007, p.220), the corrective
features I use in class are specifically adapted for each stage, and with
progression, students gain automatic and self-corrective responses to subtle
teacher and peer signals.
In the
University in China where I taught, my student’s grammatical competence was
varied. Years of instruction in grammatical theory and practice drills meant
learners lacked in accurate phonetic and semantic knowledge and production. I
created the first unit of lessons based on areas of weakness, such as
pronunciation and meaning; these were augmented by frequent corrective
feedback. As the distance of languages affects pronunciation (Lightbown &
Spada, 2006, p. 105), having a native speaker as a teacher gave the students a
more authentic example of phonetic language features. Corrective feedback I
used was often elicitation and clarification, (Brown, 2007, p. 277), and
generally more focused, direct feedback (Ferris, 2002, p. 19), such as repetition. One example is when students repeatedly
said they were ‘sinking’, I would respond with ‘you are what?’ in an exaggeratedly alarmed voice. Students laugh,
and correct their pronunciation to ‘I am thinking…’ In other times they
replaced ‘th’ with ‘s’, I would prompt them, as a reminder they must be aware
of this sound.
The discourse
competence of my students was nearly non-existent. To build their confidence I
implemented meaningful interaction and communicative teaching methods to
enhance their conversation skills. We also focused on pragmatic knowledge and
understanding, and incorporated new vocabulary into speech. Teaching students
about stress and rhythm (Lightbown & Spada, 2006, p. 106) in speaking
developed their coherence, and we practiced ‘turn-taking’ (Gass & Selinker,
2001, p. 271), which encouraged flow and a natural progression in conversation.
Feedback I used was largely clarification; seeking confirmation so students
were forced to make corrections (Gass & Selinker, 2001, p. 284), and
inquiry; where I would casually ask for more information, showing genuine
interest and giving the student a chance to improve their technique. My
students learned to interpret non-verbal signals of mine, like a frown for
error, and smile or nod for correct, a more indirect feedback (Ferris, 2002, p.
19). They learned to respond by repairing (Brown, 2007, p. 278) and
self-correcting, and confidence was reinforced.
Sociolinguistic
and strategic competences were advanced stages for my students. In class we developed
lessons using authentic material, focusing on cultural and ‘real-life’
situations, formal and informal awareness, and examining the appropriate use of
language. From body language to resourcefulness and improvisation, students
progressively expressed themselves, using individual and original output. My
feedback also changed to occasional recasting (Brown, 2007, p. 277);
incorporating the correct utterance in an encouraging response, and
reinforcement; acknowledging positively correct and accurate language
production, while administering private feedback to students still struggling.
The ability to communicate effectively; understand and be
understood (Gass & Selinker, 2001, p. 264), was a primary objective for
these students. As Brown says, over-analysis of errors can be potentially
damaging, and the use of positive reinforcement to advocate communicative
fluency is more important for language learners (2007, p. 259).
References
Brown, D. H. (2007). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching (5th ed.). White Plains, NY: Longman.
Ferris, D. (2002). Treatment of error in second language student
writing (pp. 10-37). Ann Arbor: The
University of Michigan Press.
Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (2001). Second language acquisition: An
introductory course (2nd ed.)
(pp.259-309). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Lightbown, P. M. & Spada, N. (2006). How languages are learned (3rd ed.) (pp. 77-108). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
