Category: SLA Theory

We have come to the last chapter of Eileen W Glisan and Richard Donato’s book Enacting the Work of Language Instruction (2017, ACTFL).

In this chapter, Glisan and Donato provide suggestions, as the chapter title states, for “Putting HLTPs into Practice: A Cycle of Enactment”. Enacting the High-Leverage Teaching Practices is not a one-time act but an ongoing process in which the novice or in-service teacher returns time and again to the practice, reviews and deconstructs it, analyzes application, then carries it while being observed by a sympathetic colleague with whom the teacher then discusses the implementation.

I believe that Glisan and Donato provide us with a useful model for collaboration. I also believe that it is, unfortunately, a bit idealistic and unlikely to be adopted in most school settings for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons include lack of time because teachers are usually overwhelmed by their duties and responsibilities; lack of perceived need for this kind of collaboration; lack of training on how to implement this sort of collaboration; lack of clarity on instructional objectives and the place of HLTPs in instruction; significant differences in perception of objectives, scope, and sequence in instruction; and rivalries within departments. (The last one is particularly sad, but true.)

Nonetheless, where teachers are willing to trust one another and work with one another to improve their teaching ability, the collaborative study and deconstruction of an HLTP, mutual observation of its implementation, and subsequent discussion can prove highly beneficial to those who participate – and to their students.

Glisan and Donato call this a “Cycle of Enactment” and discuss iterative rounds of investigation and practice. If done properly, this is actually a spiral rather than a cycle, since the practice should improve with each iteration. But that is a quibble.

One important aspect of implementation for this model is the idea of specific Instructional Activities. Rather than trying to do everything, practitioners focus on “specific instructional activities (IAs) that limit the context of the practice so that novices [and in-service teachers] can draw upon specific knowledge and moves as they make judgments about how to interact with their students within the construct of the high-leverage teaching practice …” (2017, p. 164) [Emphasis in original]

Where I disagree with the authors is what the specific Instructional Activities ought to be.

This disagreement reflects earlier disagreements when discussing various HLTPs, especially the focus on grammar, the seeming limitation to authentic texts only, the focus on form through PACE, and certain aspects of Oral Corrective Feedback.

Glisan and Donato provide the following suggestions. I note that they are merely suggestive and not exhaustive – but their suggestions could have been better. For example, rather than simply stating “Telling a story”, they could have suggested ways to make a story comprehensible and engaging, such as MovieTalk, Watch and Discuss, Read and Discuss, Story Listening, and many more that are known throughout the TCI community.

Facilitating Target Language Comprehensibility:
– Telling a story by making it comprehensible and actively involving learners
– Introducing new vocabulary or grammatical structures within an engaging context

N.B.: I disagree with this second one, not because we don’t teach new vocabulary or structures, but because this places the emphasis on the teaching of new vocabulary and grammatical structures. The vocabulary and structures should arise out of the engaging context rather then being pre-determined and then having a context created to fit them. There are, of course, many ways to make a story comprehensible, and it would have been nice for Glisan and Donato to provide an example or two.

Building a Classroom Discourse Community
– Facilitating a whole-class discussion based on a shared context such as an … event, popular media, or an important social issue

N.B.: The classroom itself is a shared context, and many teachers already do activities such as discussing plans for the weekend or what students did over the weekend, important social and world issues, birthdays and other celebrations, school sports, and much more. They should be encouraged to see these discussions not just as an activity but as a High-Leverage Teaching Practice that helps build a classroom discourse community. Again, strategies for leading a whole-class discussion would be helpful.

Guiding Learners to Interpret and Discuss Authentic Texts
As noted previously, my first disagreement is in the limitation of interpretation and discussion to “authentic texts” only, as well as the inconsistent understanding of the word authentic in most discussions. Here I agree with Bill VanPatten’s idea of authentic as being whatever is consistent with and part of the classroom context.
– Guiding learners through a(n authentic) reading via tasks that elicit literal comprehension followed by interpretation
– Leading class discussion based on a(n authentic) text

N.B.: Aside from my disagreements about “authentic”, I find these two Instructional Activities beneficial for language acquisition because they focus on comprehensible input, both in the form of the text itself and in the discussion that follows. Teachers will need various strategies for supporting a discussion based on the language level of the students.

Focusing on Form in a Dialogic Context Through PACE
– Presenting an authentic story … that features a grammatical structure occurring naturally within a meaningful context
– Guiding learners in dialoguing about and co-constructing  grammatical from …

N.B.: Creating a lesson around grammar takes us backward in our application of knowledge about second language acquisition. However, helping students deal with grammatical forms on a spontaneous, need-to-know or inquiry basis, can be very helpful. That’s why I am willing to give the second IA a “meh” rating.

Focusing on Cultural Products, Practices, and Perspectives
– Making use of engaging images of a cultural product or practice as a launching point for [discussion of] cultural perspectives
– Making use of … data of various kinds for reflecting on the cultural meanings of products and/or practices

N.B.: The quality of this IA is, of course, dependent on the choice and use of the materials. That does not negate the fact that this is one of the better examples that the authors give.

Providing Oral Corrective Feedback to Improve Learner Performance
– Facilitating a whole-class discussion in which oral teacher feedback plays a role to support student speaking …
– Conducting an oral extension activity in which learners use a grammatical structure … and are guided by teacher feedback.

N.B.: The second of these IAs once again takes us back to an emphasis on grammar rather than communication, even if Glisan and Donato put “to make meaning” into the description. It is still “practicing” the language. The first of these two IAs gets a “meh” because it depends so much on whether or not the teacher is forcing student speaking or simply supporting student speaking that is natural and unforced. The authors leave this distinction entirely too vague.

The great weakness of this chapter lies in the paucity of suggestions for accomplishing the “Instructional Activities”. While the book cannot be all things to all people, it would have been helpful for the authors to include some examples and suggestions of strategies to accomplish their suggested IAs.

Next week we should finish this chapter and the book by taking a look at the “Cyclical Model for Enacting HLTPs” itself, challenges of implementation, and some final thoughts.

I hope this extended look at a potentially significant publication from ACTFL has been helpful.

Leave a comment.

With this post, we come to the end of the sixth High-Leverage Teaching Practice but not to the end of the book Enacting the Work of Language Instruction; High-Leverage Teaching Practices by Eileen W. Glisan and Richard Donato, available from ACTFL.

As they do with all of the teaching practices they present, the authors close off the chapter by deconstructing the practice, providing tasks to rehearse the practice, assessing the practice, and putting the practice into a larger context, as well as providing suggestions for further reading.

Last week I included a “flow chart” (in quotes because it wasn’t really a chart). This week I have it in chart form. Let me know if you have difficulty reading it. The font I can work with; Continue reading “Providing Oral Corrective Feedback … – Part 4”

Today will be a shorter post than last week.

I want to take a look solely at the section of this chapter entitled “Considerations About Providing Corrective Feedback”. Glisan and Donato give five considerations in the form of questions.

Should I discuss the role of feedback with my learners?

“Yes!” reply Glisan and Donato. They note that learning a language is so different from the learning that takes place in students’ other classes that they benefit from an explanation of how the teacher’s responses can benefit them. They also recommend a discussion at the beginning of the course or semester with the intent of reaching two goals:
a. Find out how students feel about receiving Corrective Feedback. The purpose is to help the teacher determine when, how, and what kinds of Corrective Feedback to provide.
b. Help students understand how Corrective Feedback can help them learn the language and improve performance.

I agree that it is beneficial for the teacher to discuss with students how the course works, theoretical underpinnings, etc. At the same time, I doubt that my discussion will look quite like Glisan and Donato imagine.

Since Glisan and Donato’s discussion is based on the theory that noticing is essential to language acquisition, we part company on the issue of when, how, how much, and what kind of Corrective Feedback to give. There are, of course, appropriate occasions in the language classroom to invoke the Monitor and discuss items that contribute to its effectiveness. These occasions, however, are few and far between – especially at the lowest levels. Far more important is Comprehensible Input, the sole sufficient cause of language acquisition.

This evening at church, I happened to speak with another congregant and found out that she teaches in the teacher training program at CSU Long Beach, our local CSU campus. Specifically, she teaches Second Language Acquisition (English Language Learners) and Special Education research, principles, and theory to teacher candidates.

When I explained my plans for retirement and mentioned coaching and advising teachers, she asked me what method(s) or approach(es) I used. Not knowing at the time how much she knew about SLA, I started an explanation, and she finished my explanation with the words “Comprehensible Input!” That started a great conversation, and I was so pleased to know that there are others, not just foreign language teachers, who understand that CI is the sine qua non of language instruction.

She also agreed with me, contra Glisan and Donato, that any grammar explanation, corrective feedback, or attempt to get students to notice is effective only insofar as it aids negotiation of meaning and supports understanding.

In his paper on Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition, Dr Stephen Krashen notes that he has changed is opinion on one matter. In the original work, he advocated hiding the acquisition process from students. Now, however, he strongly favors discussing the process of Second Language Acquisition with students so that they can continue to learn on their own.

I doubt that Krashen’s discussion would look much like Glisan’s or Donato’s, either.

How do I determine when I should provide corrective feedback?

Despite my disagreement with Glisan and Donato on the nature and value of Corrective Feedback, I believe their answer to this question is helpful.

The authors note that making this determination is a complex process and dependent on a number of factors. They divide these factors into two categories: Learner Factors and Contextual Factors.

Contextual Factors involve answering the following question:

• Does the error interfere with the learner’s intended meaning? (If no, don’t correct.)
• Is the error the linguistic target of the lesson, e.g. made during the focus on form lesson? (Since I disagree with focus on form for acquisition, I find this question not germane.
• Is the error one that is being made frequently by many learners in the class? (If no, don’t correct.)

In this section, Glisan and Donato state, “Of critical importance is that, within a sociocultural perspective, corrective feedback should be approached in such a way as to serve meaning-making and interaction.”

This statement again makes me wonder if the authors fully understand their position. It seems to contradict their earlier distinction that “… many of these types of CF can be used to provide conversational feedback instead of to call attention to linguistic errors.”

The second set of factors are Learner Factors that give rise to the following questions:

• Would the learner benefit from receiving Corrective Feedback, i.e. is the learner developmentally ready for this feedback?
• Is the individual learner open to receiving Corrective Feedback?
• Does the learner appear to be confused and in need of Corrective Feedback to make meaning and/or clear up misunderstanding?
• Does the learner appear to want Corrective Feedback assistance from he teacher?

Glisan and Donato suggest that a “yes” answer to any one of these questions justifies providing Corrective Feedback. I disagree in that the second questions appears to me to be the gatekeeper. If the individual learner is not open to receiving Corrective Feedback, a yes answer to any of the other questions will not make it beneficial.

How do I know whether to use implicit or explicit CF strategies?

Here I find Glisan and Donato’s advice excellent.

They recommend a graduated approach within a dialogic structure.

That is, start with the least intrusive, most implicit strategy and move in the direction of increasingly explicit as needed. If a raised eyebrow or “Huh?” is sufficient to elicit negotiation of meaning, why use something more intrusive?

On what basis should I decide to use prompts vs. reformulations in providing CF?

Once again, I find myself in agreement with Glisan and Donato on this consideration.

They state, “The decision to use prompts or reformulations depends on whether the teacher desires further output from learners following the CF. To this end, prompts elicit output and reformulations offer input without signaling a need to respond further.” (2017, p. 148)

Glisan and Donato noted earlier that reformulations (aka recasts) is the type of Corrective Feedback used most by teachers. (2017, p. 144). At the time, they cast some doubts on their effectiveness, maintaining that “… they have been found to be less likely to lead to uptake by learners in comparison to other strategies such as elicitation and clarification requests.” Nonetheless, they were forced to admit that the long-term benefits of implicit correction exceed those of explicit correction.

Questions that arise from this discrepancy between the two passages lead to a number of questions. Among them is the question of how it was determined that recasts are less likely to lead to uptake if recasts are not intended to elicit a response. I would like to know the studies and their procedures. Once again, I believe Glisan and Donato allow their theory to affect their assessment of the evidence.

Since my primary goal is to provide Comprehensible Input, I will use primarily reformulations.

What if my learners experience anxiety when I provide CF?

You’re doing something wrong.

Glisan and Donato are more diplomatic in their answer than I, but it comes to the same thing.

If learners experience anxiety when the teacher provides Corrective Feedback, then the teacher is doing something wrong.

It may be that the teacher has failed to establish a classroom discourse community.

It may be that the teacher is working outside the students’ zone of proximal development, so the feedback simply adds stress rather than relief.

It may be that the teacher has failed to gain the trust and respect of the students.

It may be something else, but whatever it is, the teacher is doing something wrong if corrective feedback increases students’ anxiety.

Glisan and Donato close this section with a nice flow chart. I will try to recreate some semblance of it.

Consider Contextual Factors

All answers “yes”, proceed to Learner Factors.
“No”: ignore the error.

Consider Learner Factors

All answers “yes”, decide on Corrective Feedback
“No”: ignore the error.

Decision to Provide Corrective Feedback

Decide on Reformulation or Prompt
If moving interaction forward: Reformulations
If working in learner’s Zone of Proximal Development: Prompts

Reformulations

Conversational Recast
Repetition
Provide language needed to express meaning
Foreshadow new language

Prompts

Move from implicit to explicit
Clarification Request –> Elicitation –> Metalinguistic clues –> Explicit Correction

I encourage you to look at Figure 6.2 (p. 149) in Enacting the Work of Language Instruction to see the flowchart as Glisan and Donato lay it out.

My conclusion on the use of Corrective Oral Feedback is “It depends”. It depends on what you want to accomplish. It depends on your relationship with your students. It depends on which strategies you choose.

Okay, that turned out longer than I intended.

In the remaining portion of the chapter, Glisan and Donato deconstruct the practice and provide suggestions for rehearsing the practice. We’ll take a look at those next time.

Continuing with our discussion of High-Leverage Teaching Practice #6 (Providing Corrective Oral Feedback to Improve Learner Performance) in Enacting the Work of Language Instruction (2017) …

Today we will take a look at Glisan and Donato’s Research and Theory Supporting the Practice.

The authors state, “A body of research has confirmed the effectiveness of corrective feedback in supporting language learning and development …” (2017, p. 142)

I do not question that a body of research has confirmed the effectiveness of corrective feedback in supporting what was tested. My questions revolve around what was tested. At the moment I have no answers, nor do Glisan and Donato provide any.

Does corrective feedback support acquisition, i.e. the ability to use the language in spontaneous use for communication (the expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning)? Or does it support Monitor use, i.e. the ability to edit utterances by thinking of and applying the “rules of grammar”? What was tested? Discrete grammar items? How was it tested? Was spontaneous communication tested, or was the test conducted under conditions conducive to Monitor use?

Krashen rejects error correction as useful for acquisition and provides case study evidence of acquisition without error correction or many of the other things traditionally practiced by language teachers.. Krashen does grant error correction a small place for Monitor use. I wonder, though, if he defines error correction the same way that Glisan and Donato define it. All too often, writers use terms without clearly defining them.

VanPatten opines that corrective feedback may lead to acquisition if it is part of negotiating meaning. (We will see in a moment that he probably still disagrees with Glisan and Donato about the place of error correction.)

This raises the question of research on the different kinds of oral corrective feedback. Has it been done? What are the results? Are all types of corrective feedback equally effective? Based on what standards?

Glisan and Donato note that “… different types of feedback can be more or less useful in leading to what is called uptake, how learners use the oral feedback offered by the teacher to repair their error or not …” (2017, p. 142; emphasis in original) Does this mean that different types of feedback are inherently more or less useful? Does the usefulness of any specific type of feedback vary depending on the context and other factors?

The authors predicate the usefulness / effectiveness of the feedback on students’ noticing its corrective nature. This takes us to the Noticing Hypothesis, which both Krashen and VanPatten question or reject. John Truscott, in his article “Noticing in Second Language Acquisition: A Critical Review“, notes the extremely limiting constraints of noticing and the weakness of any support for its effectiveness.

Based on my own case studies, I note that a couple of types of corrective feedback enumerated by Glisan and Donato seem to be helpful in negotiating meaning, i.e. in actual communication, and thus potentially helpful for acquisition.

However, Glisan and Donato distinguish between certain strategies employed as oral corrective feedback and those same strategies used as conversational feedback. They write, “It bears mentioning that many of these types of CF [Corrective Feedback] can be used to provide conversational feedback instead of to call attention to linguistic errors.” (2017, p. 143)

I have at least two questions from this:

1. Is this a distinction without a difference? If I give feedback that shows I have not understood the utterance, my interlocutor still has to adapt the utterance so that it becomes understandable. This may well involve changing certain elements of the utterance to conform to standard language use.
2. Are Glisan and Donato themselves clear on their own distinction? In the paragraph that contains the statement above, the authors give examples of how certain strategies for providing oral corrective feedback may be used as conversational feedback. However, in the same paragraph they state, “Further, instead of using a linguistic utterance, the teach could also use a paralinguistic signal [emphasis in original] to non-verbally elicit a self-correction from the learner – e.g., a quizzical look or nodding of the head …” If the signal is given to “elicit a self-correction”, isn’t that Corrective Feedback? Yet, Glisan and Donato place it in the paragraph devoted to examples of using the strategies for a purpose other than Corrective Feedback.

I am not convinced that the authors themselves are clear on the distinction – or that their distinction truly makes a difference for some of the types of feedback.

So, what are the common types of oral corrective feedback?

1. Explicit Correction: The teacher gives the correct form or states that the learner’s statement was incorrect.
2. Recasts: The teacher responds and reformulates the learner’s statement without calling attention to the fact that it was incorrect.
3. Clarification Requests: The teacher indicates that the learner’s statement was not comprehensible and asks for a reformulation.
4. Metalingistic Feedback: The teacher asks questions about the statement (specifically about the grammatical error) or provides grammatical metalanguage that points out the nature of the error (i.e. uses technical language to discuss in English the learner’s error).
5. Elicitation: The teacher prompts the learner to provide the correct form by repeating the leaner’s statement verbatim up to the point where the error occurred.
6. Repetition: The teacher repeats the learner’s utterance but with an inflection that indicates and highlights an error.

Glisan and Donato also place these Corrective Feedback Strategies on a grid with two axes.

The first axis is the distinction between reformulations (which provide the corrected restatement) and prompts (which elicit self-repair from the student).

The second axis is implicit vs explicit correction. In the latter, the teacher states clearly that correction is taking place or otherwise draws direct attention to it. In the former, it is left to the learner to notice the correction.

The authors then place each of the strategies within a quadrant. Since I haven’t yet figured out how to produce a drawing or table, I will simply describe them.

Quadrant A is Implicit Prompts. These are 1) Clarification Requests and 2) Repetition.

Quadrant B is Explicit Prompts. These are 1) Elicitations and 2) Metalinguiastic clues.

Quadrant C is Implicit Reformulations. The sole strategy placed here is Recasts.

Quadrant D is Explicit Reformulations. Here they place Explicit Correction.

My suspicion is that Explicit Correction is the kind of Corrective Feedback that most people mean when they use the term.

In their conclusion to this section of the chapter, Glisan and Donato make some statements that bear further consideration. They write:

… although recasts tend to be the CF type used most by teachers, they have generally been found to be less likely to lead to uptake by learners in comparison to other strategies such as elicitation and clarification requests. The benefit of recasts appears to be i scaling learners’ attention to form without disrupting communication and meaning-making … However the issue is even more complex,. Research has suggested that even though learners might attend to explicit CF more easily, “the effects of implicit CF might be more robust (i.e. longer lasting) than those of explicit CF, which might be more effective in the short term …” (Lyster, Saito, & Sato (2013). “Oral corrective feedback in second language classrooms” in Language Teaching, 46, p. 5; quoted by Glisan and Donato (2017, p. 144).)

Let’s take note of what the authors say (and perhaps don’t say) and the implications. Glisan and Donato report:

When the teacher recasts a learner’s utterance, this is implicit reformulation, and students do not give as great evidence of uptake (i.e. the students do not repair their error at the time of “correction”) as with certain other strategies.

At first glance, we might conclude that the most-used strategy is the least effective.

However, this does not take certain factors into account. First of all, a recast is not necessarily intended to elicit a repair of the utterance on the part of the learner. The recast provides the leaner with a corrected version of the statement but does not prompt the student to repeat it, at least not if we wish to maintain the primary advantage of this strategy – which is that it functions without disrupting communication and meaning-making. (2017, p. 144)

Since we cannot see what is going on within the mind/brain, it is difficult (impossible?) to evaluate the efficacy of a strategy that does not call for production.

This, btw, is one of the difficulties many people  have in evaluating the efficacy of comprehension-based strategies and practices. Since acquisition is internal and unconscious even for the student, the traditional markers and indicators used by assessments do not provide sufficient data of the right kind for learning-based tests to make an evaluation.

In this section, I believe that the authors reveal their bias. I may be reading more into the text than is there, but I don’t believe so. Here’s the evidence.

When presenting the basis for the practice, Glisan and Donato are categorical in their assertion that “A body of research has confirmed the effectiveness of corrective feedback …” They are also quite definitive in their assertion that students need to notice grammatical features. Earlier I noted what looks like a (not so) veiled jab at Van Patten’s position on language acquisition.

However, in this instance, where evidence contrasts with their position, the authors present it much more speculatively and attach a qualifier from their position. “Research has suggested … learners might attend … the effects of implicit CF might be more robust … This finding could be the result … and perhaps produce a response.” From their speculation (“This finding could be the result of implicit CF prompting learners to access L2 knowledge and problem-solving as they work to notice the error, correct it, and perhaps produce a response.”), Glisan and Donato produce the following definitive statement: “Therefore [i.e. because of what we speculate], the long-term effects of implicit feedback only apply in cases where learners’ [sic] are motivated to attend to the teacher’s reformulated part of the utterance and process for themselves what they heard and noticed.” (2017, p. 144)

The definitiveness of the conclusion is, to me, unwarranted from the speculation.

Besides, I can postulate another explanation that, I believe, better “preserves the appearances” (cf. Occam’s razor):

Implicit error correction in the form of recasts and reformulations simply provides the learner with additional comprehensible input at a moment when the student is interested in the input. Thus, the long-term effects of implicit “error correction” are attributable to the unconscious process of acquisition rather than the complex and tenuous mechanism of “noticing“.

I will not attempt to ascribe motive or describe a history of the text. Such attempts are overwhelmingly, (nearly) unanimously, erroneous.

Let it suffice to say that I believe Glisan and Donato seriously miss the mark in their evaluation of the effectiveness of both noticing and explicit Corrective Feedback in language acquisition.

Next time we’ll take a look at Glisan and Donato’s Considerations about Providing Corrective Feedback.

Today we come to the sixth and last of the High-Leverage Teaching Practices presented by Glisan and Donato in their book Enacting the Work of Language Instruction; High-Leverage Teaching Practices.

This HLTP comes with controversy, and Glisan and Donato address that in their introduction to the practice. Kudos to them. However, I believe the issue deserves greater discussion than the authors give it.

So, we’ll discuss the issue of corrective feedback a bit more here.

In their introduction to the practice, Glisan and Donato state,

“A key issue that has been explored extensively in research in second-language acquisition and L2 teaching and learning is the place of teacher feedback, either provided to call learners’ attention to errors in their speech or to respond to the content of a learner utterance. While there is evidence to indicate that extensive focus on error correction by the teacher can undermine L2 performance and demotivate learners, the research also shows that learners benefit from attention to form, which cans serve as a meaning making resource … Further studies have revealed that learners prefer to receive feedback as opposed to having their errors ignored … It is not surprising that novice language teachers are faced with a daunting task when it comes to deciding what types of feedback they should provide to learners and under what circumstances …” (2017, p. 141)

It’s important to understand what the authors do and do not advocate.

It’s also important to understand what the term “Oral Corrective Feedback” means.

Glisan and Donato certainly do not advocate extensive use of corrective feedback. Nor do they advocate striving for error-free production. As the authors write,

“… the teacher’s expectations during oral interaction should never be error-free performance by learners.” (2017, p. 141)

In fact, “… calling learners’ attention to and correcting every single error has no place within a language program that prioritizes meaning-making and communicative interaction.” (2017, p.141)

Nor do Glisan and Donato advocate error correction apart from negotiating meaning. After noting that the term “Corrective Feedback” has traditionally been defined as a move by the teacher that focuses learners’ attention to the grammatical accuracy of their utterance, the authors suggest that the contemporary understanding of Corrective Feedback as “a tool for mediating language learning and development.” (2017, p.142)

Many studies have indicated that Error Correction has little or no effect on acquisition. (cf. Truscott, J. (1999). What’s wrong with oral grammar correction. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 55, 437-455.) Other studies have found it at least somewhat productive. (cf. Ellis, R., Loewen, S., & Erlam, R. (2005). Implicit and explicit corrective feedback and the acquisition of L2grammar. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 28, 339-368.)

In 1978, J. Hendrickson identified five fundamental questions for the discussion of Corrective Feedback. (HENDRICKSON, J. (1978) Error correction in foreign language teaching: recent theory, research, and practice. In K. Croft (Ed.) Readings on English as a Second Language. Cambridge, Ma.: Winthrop. pp. 153-175.) These five questions are
1. Should errors be corrected?
2. If so, when should errors be corrected?
3. Which learner errors should be corrected?
4. How should learner errors be corrected?
5. Who should correct learner errors?

These questions remain valid.

With regard to the first question, Glisan and Donato clearly come down on the side of “Yes, errors should be corrected.” This is obvious from the inclusion of “Providing Oral Corrective Feedback to Improve Learner Performance” as a High-Leverage Teaching Practice.

Krashen and VanPatten would reply, “It depends.”

While maintaining that Error Correction has no value for acquisition, Krashen does not reject it as having no value whatsoever. For him, it has Monitor value. (See Krashen, Stephen D. (2009). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Internet edition, pp. 10, 116-119.)

Thus, Error Correction can be beneficial when certain restricted conditions are met: 1) Errors corrected are limited to learnable and portable rules; 2) Errors are corrected under conditions that allow Monitor use (reading and writing are key activities that fulfill this restriction); 3) Measures evaluating the efficacy of error correction are administered under conditions that allow Monitor use, to allow the learner time to refer to his or her conscious knowledge; 4) Learners are Monitor users.

For Krashen, “This implies no error correction in free conversation, but allows for error correction on written work and grammar exercises.” (2009, p. 117)

VanPatten indicates that Corrective Feedback could have benefit for acquisition when it is used to negotiate meaning. (See VanPatten, B. (2003). From input to output: A teacher’s guide to second language acquisition. Mahwah, MJ: Erlbaum.) This seems consistent with VanPatten’s insistence that acquisition takes place only during communication, i.e. whenever the expression, comprehension, and negotiation of meaning take place.

The consensus seems to be that there is not no place for Error Correction. (Yes, the double negative is deliberate and meaningful.)

However, there is great difference of opinion on the other questions.

We’ll take a look at those questions in later posts. That will take us into the HLTP itself.

I’m stopping here for today since I was at the California Language Teachers Association (CLTA) conference in Ontario over the weekend and need to get ready for classes and get a good night’s rest. Changing to Daylight Saving Time is always difficult.

The conference was good, and I enjoyed seeing friends and meeting new friends. I also picked up some tips and ideas as well as being reminded of practices and strategies and getting a dose of encouragement and inspiration.

If you are interested in knowing more about my take on the conference, read my Facebook posts under Compelling Input Productions over the next few days.

Once we have decided on the preparatory matters (see my discussion of Focusing on Culture Part 2), we can implement the practice.

Glisan and Donato deconstruct the practice using the IMAGE model.

Once again, we need to note that this is simply the model that the authors have chosen to use. Other models of Focusing on Culture exist.

As the authors write,

“The lesson is developed around a series of cultural images that will lead students to make cultural observations and draw conclusions. Dialogic interaction in the target language is promoted by Continue reading “Focusing on Culture … in a Dialogic Context – Part 3”

The full title of this HLTP and chapter is “Focusing on Cultural Products, Practices, and Perspectives in a Dialogic Context”.

The purpose of this is to help distinguish the practice from more traditional teaching of “culture” and “Culture” as isolated items without regard for context or purpose. The new practice seeks to introduce practices and products as expressions of perspectives.

As noted last time, the IMAGE model is simply one approach to teaching cultural products, practices, and perspectives. It is by no means the only model, and a teach should not feel guilty for using a different model.

The acronym IMAGE expresses four steps. (I think the fact that five letters are used to represent  four steps says more about our proclivity toward acronyms that create words than anything essential to the model – but that’s just my opinion.) These four steps are Continue reading “Focusing on Culture … in a Dialogic Context – Part 2”

Wow, I managed to talk about the previous chapter in Enacting the Work of Language Instruction; High-Leverage Teaching Practices by Eileen W. Glisan and Richard Donato in only four posts rather than the seven that the discussion of “authentic texts” took.

Before taking on the chapter about Cultural Products, Practices, and Perspective, let’s review a little bit.

I began my discussion of the book back in November, shortly after I returned from the annual ACTFL (American Conference on Teaching Foreign Language) conference.

The first post covered two High-Leverage Teaching Practices (HLTPs): Facilitating Target Language Comprehensibility and Building a Classroom Discourse Community.

The teacher implements the first HLTP by creating Continue reading “Focusing on Culture … in a Dialogic Context – Part 1”

Before you wonder too much whether you missed three posts …

No, you didn’t. I have in the previous three posts used the title “Focusing on Form in a Dialogic Context” because I was looking at the principles behind the practice. However, the full title of the chapter at which we are looking is “Focusing on Form in a Dialogic Context Through PACE”.

Since we are looking in this post at the strategy or model for Focusing on Form that Glisan and Donato have chosen for their book Enacting the Work of Language Instruction, I thought it would be a good idea to put that in the title.

…

On Saturday, 10 February 2018, I led and presented at a workshop for COACH Foreign Language Project. Our guest speaker was Dr Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus at USC and renowned linguist. (BTW, that’s why I didn’t get this post finished until today.)

In his presentation, Dr Krashen discussed the two basic approaches to language acquisition: Comprehensible Input and Skill Building.

Just in case anyone has missed it, the Comprehensible Input approach is based on five hypotheses:

• The Acquisition-Learning Distinction: we acquire language unconsciously through procedural knowledge processing rather than learning it consciously through declarative knowledge processing;
• The Natural Order Hypothesis: we acquire language in a natural order, the basic structure (and some details) of which we know for English, and this order cannot be altered by instruction, but for various reasons we should not construct a syllabus that presents language in this order;
• The Monitor Hypothesis: learned language (i.e. declarative knowledge of the “rules”) has a limited function as a monitor or editor under highly constrained circumstances (know the rule, be focused on the rule, have time to apply the rule);
• The Input Hypothesis: we acquire languages only through Comprehensible Input, i.e. hearing and reading messages in the target language that we understand, and this is the sole sufficient cause of acquisition;
• The Affective Filter Hypothesis: affective (non-language) factors such as attitude toward the instructor and the language, external noise, time of day, hunger, sleepiness or tiredness, social interaction, and stress have a strong impact on the learner’s ability to receive Comprehensible Input as comprehended intake, such that teachers must work to “lower the affective filter” in order to help students acquire the language.

Comprehensible Input is the sole sufficient cause of language acquisition.

Instruction using Comprehensible Input (it is not a method but simply understandable language employed to express, interpret, and negotiate meaning) leads to communication first, which results in the acquisition of the language and its elements, .e.g grammar, pronunciation, syntax.

The Skill Building Hypothesis is based on the idea that learning a language is similar to learning to play a sport. The learner needs to build the skills – grammar, pronunciation, syntax, phonemic awareness, etc. – of the language. Only when these have been mastered will the learner be able to put the together and communicate.

Dr Krashen presented compelling evidence that the Skill Building Hypothesis contains two fatal flaws: It is boring and painful for the learner (except for an extremely small number of students), and it doesn’t work.

Unfortunately, within the traditional public (and private) education system in the United States (and probably other countries as well), most people accept the Skill Building Hypothesis as an axiom rather than as as a hypothesis that has been shown to be false.

What’s this about the Skill Building Hypothesis being false? Haven’t generations of students learned languages this way, and haven’t many of these students gone on to become quite fluent? The others just didn’t have the aptitude for learning languages, right?

Let’s look at those questions individually.

For a hypothesis to be considered false, we need to find only a single instance in which it is not true. Dr Krashen presented – and presents in many of his writings that are increasingly available for free on his website – several case histories in which learners had access only to comprehensible input and yet came to speak the second or third language fluently. Challenges to the Comprehensible Input Hypothesis, however, have failed to falsify it after 40 years. (Yes, it’s been around that long.)

Case Histories

When I lived in Germany in the 1970s, I lived with a family in which the mother was Swiss and the father was Swabian. This was in the city of Stuttgart, Germany. Most of the time, I heard Swabian-influenced German and picked up without conscious study words and phrases of Swabian, as might expect. However, within the family, I often heard the mother speaking Schwyzerdutsch, in the dialect of her hometown near Zurich, to her children. Once again, with no conscious attempt to acquire the language, I came to understand this dialect, although I never received enough input to be comfortable speaking it – nor did I have any reason to do so.

The reason I know that this happened – and happened unconsciously – is the following incident.

Shortly before I returned to the US, I was having Sunday afternoon “tea” with the family and a local couple that they had invited for the afternoon. While we were sitting at the table talking, the phone rang. One of the children answered the phone and reported back to his mother that a friend wanted to talk to her. His mother told him to ask the friend what she wanted, and if it was okay for the mother to call back later. The child did as asked and reported back to his mother.

Following this exchange, the visiting couple – who were native Germans from the Stuttgart area – asked, “What was that about?” My response was a slightly incredulous, “You mean you didn’t understand that?” Everyone at the table turned to look at me and exclaimed, “And you did?!”

You see, the entire exchange had been carried out in Swiss German, a dialect that was unintelligible the Swabian-speaking couple. I, however, had acquired an understanding of the dialect without any formal study or even conscious effort.

This case history is, in and of itself, sufficient to falsify the Skill Building Hypothesis. But Dr Krashen presented other case histories in which the acquirers went even further than I did and became fluent speakers of the target language. One child acquired Mandarin by watching cartoons and later other movies and has no problem conversing fluently with native Mandarin speakers. An immigrant to the US learned both English and Hebrew at his job in a deli. Without any study of grammar, syntax, etc., he became fluent to the point that native speakers occasionally mistake him for a native speaker. The only correction he ever received from his Hebrew-speaking co-workers and employer was vocabulary (i.e. they only told him the correct name of things when he got it wrong or asked for it).

But what about generations of students, some of whom have gone on to become fluent?

The problem here is that we have so many variables to take into account. Furthermore, most of the people who report becoming fluent – and this is often a mantra of language teaching – did so by being immersed in the language by moving to a country where it is spoken or becoming involved in a community that spoke the language. The real cause of fluency, then, turns out to have been comprehensible input, not the skill building of grammar and syntax.

But aren’t these simply the students who had a natural aptitude for languages, anyway?

No. They are the students who had sufficient interest to surround themselves with the language. In his book While We’re on the Topic, Dr Bill VanPatten maintains that we need to stop thinking about “language aptitude” because 1) it has no bearing on language acquisition and 2) any person who has learned one language has the “aptitude” to learn a second or third or fourth etc.

Language “aptitude” has no bearing on language acquisition

PACE

So, what does this lengthy excursus on language acquisition have to do with the High-Leverage Teaching Practice of “Focusing on Form in a Dialogic Context Through Pace”?

Simply this: PACE is based on the Skill Building Hypothesis.

Pace is based on the Skill Building Hypothesis

Here are the steps in PACE

• PRESENTATION of a text that contains the form on which the teacher wishes to focus
• ATTENTION is draw to the form that is important to understanding
• CO-CONSTRUCTION of an explanation of the form through discussion and dialogue
• EXTENSION and use of the form in a new context

In essence, this is simply a variant of the old PRESENT – PRACTICE – PERFORM model that has failed to provide generations of students with a pathway to proficiency and acquisition.

That is not to say the Glisan and Donato have no good ideas within this section. However, those ideas are compromised by the overall context of and service to the authors’ “focus on form” (i.e. grammar, syntax, etc.). Additionally, these ideas have been presented in connection with other High-Leverage Teaching Practices, so they would be included even if this section were absent from the text.

Ideas for selecting stories include relevance and age-appropriateness for the learners, interest level (e.g. engaging plot and characters), cultural relevance, and potential for expansion.

A key difference between the Comprehensible Input Hypothesis and the Skill Building Hypothesis comes to the fore in this discussion, however.

According to Krashen and VanPatten, there is no need to target grammatical structures or other elements, because these are imbedded in the language. High-frequency words, phrases, and collocations will be repeated because they are … well … high frequency. On the other hand, Glisan and Donato lay upon the teacher the need to find stories that “contain natural occurrences in sufficient quantity of the particular form on which learners will focus attention and discuss at a later time with the teacher and each other.” (2017, p. 95)

There is no need to Focus on Form (i.e. target grammar) because it is all embedded in the language

The authors also discourage teachers from inventing a story. On the one hand, this is good advice if the teacher is writing a story to focus on an element of grammar. On the other hand, co-creating a story with the learners is an excellent way to help them hear and read a text in the target language that they understand. The kind of story you get will depend to a large extent on the kind of story you set out to write.

Next comes “Plan and Prepare the Story for Presentation”. I found it interesting that this portion of the model looks a lot like what Dr Beniko Mason does for her Story Listening with some significant differences. Dr Mason emphasizes choosing and telling a good story, one that has stood the test of time. She encourages the use of a variety of techniques to make the story both understandable and interesting: drawing, gestures, writing, glossing, comprehension checks, etc. The purpose of Story Listening is to lead students on to literacy, so Dr Mason includes this even at early stages in the process as a part of the whole. Glisan and Donato, however, suggest a printed version of the story only for an “upper-level class” and then as a substitute for the oral telling rather than as a supplement to it.

By the way, I agree with both Dr Mason and the authors that teachers will benefit from studying how to tell stories and from practicing this craft. An important element of this is to time the story so that the teacher knows how long it will take and can divide it into parts if necessary.

Teachers can benefit from lessons in storytelling

The next two phases of the PACE are where Glisan and Donato diverge significantly from the Comprehensible Input Hypothesis. After choosing, preparing, and presenting a story, as well as checking for comprehension, the teacher then begins a discussion of form by drawing “the learners’ ATTENTION to a meaningful form”. (2017, p. 97)

Here, Glisan and Donato explicitly state their adherence to to the Noticing Hypothesis, i.e. that a learner must “notice” the form in order to learn (or acquire) it. Thankfully, the authors insist that this phase should last only a few minutes.

However, I align with Krashen and VanPatten in questioning the validity of including this phase at all. If the evidence that Dr Krashen presents is to be accepted, then “noticing” is unnecessary and not an efficient or effective use of instructional time. VanPatten states, “If acquisition and communication are your goal, explicit teaching is not the best use of your time.” (2017, p. 100)

If acquisition and communication are your goal, explicit teaching is not the best use of your time

Furthermore, “… focus on form is not pre-planned or purposeful. It arises incidentally during a communicative interaction.” (VanPatten 2017, p. 103) This position stands in sharp contrast to the entire notion of using PACE to accomplish “Focusing on Form”. 

At the 2017 ACTFL convention, I participated in a Skype conference call with Dr Bill VanPatten. During the course of the conversation, someone mentioned the PACE model, and Dr VanPatten had a strong negative reaction to PACE. VanPatten reiterated a position he states in his book While We’re on the Topic: “… given what we know about the slow and piecemeal nature of acquisition, focus on form can hardly cause instantaneous acquisition of a particular property of language.” (2017, p. 114)

A further weakness of the PACE model is that the Co-Construction Phase is “dialogic grammar instruction” conducted in the native language. That makes it instruction in linguistics and not part of any process of acquisition. And, to make it work correctly, the teacher is expected to “diagnose the ZPD [Zone of Proximal Development] in each learner so that the assistance given can realistically be used by learners to mediate concept development about grammar, that is, so that the assistance is neither too easy and therefore unnecessary or incomprehensible to the learners and therefore ineffective and unusable.” (Glisan and Donato 2017, p. 98)

In other words, the teacher is expected to know just where each of his 40 students in each of his five classes per day is with regard to language acquisition and tailor not only the chosen story but also the co-construction phase of instruction to each individual student’s needs so that the “assistance is neither too easy … or incomprehensible to learners …” Can we say “burnout”?

In the EXTENSION phase of the model, “learners use the new grammatical concept in creative and interesting ways”. (Glisan and Donato 2017, p. 101) That is simply the Practice part of the old way of doing things. It wasn’t effective in the past, and it isn’t effective today.

It is a practice that VanPatten warns against in an article written for the October/November 2014 issue of ACTFL’s The Language Educator magazine. VanPatten writes,

Camarata, Stephen. The Intuitive Parent: Why the Best Thing for Your Child is You (Kindle Locations 343-345). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

As Dr Krashen might say, “Given sufficient Comprehensible Input, the brain chooses its own I+1.”

Given sufficient Comprehensible Input, the brain chooses its own I+1.

This is true not only of children but of adolescents and adults – and we will recognize that if we accept the fact of brain plasticity throughout life.

So then, “Given how both language grows in the mind and communication develops over time, a communicative and proficiency-oriented classroom is already doing what it must do: helping the learner’s internal processes.” (VanPatten 2017, p. 114)

As Susan Gross used to say at conferences and workshops, “Just talk to the kids”.

Last week I wrote that we would take a look at a couple of questions that Eileen W. Glisan and Richard Donato address in their chapter on “Focus on Form” in Enacting the Work of Language Instruction.

At the end of their introduction to the High-Leverage Teaching Practice (HLTP), the author pose and answer three questions. We’ve already looked at the first one, but let’s review it and then move on to the other two.

Why can’t I just explain the rule and let students do the exercises in the book?

Glisan and Donato note that these “rules  of grammar” are actually “rules of thumb”, often incomplete, and “inadequate for understanding how forms function as meaning-making resources in social and cultural contexts”. (2017, p. 92)

Then they propose “conceptual knowledge of language” as the solution. In this case, though, Continue reading “Focusing on Form in a Dialogic Context … – Part 3”