Learner self-correction in EFL written compositions Taka-Yoshi Makino

The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what degree teacher cues or hints help their students correct their own errors in EFL written compositions, and what kinds of cues are more effective in self-correction. The sixty-two Japanese college students who were sampled were required to correct their errors by themselves, using the cues provided by their teachers. The finding of the study was that the more detailed the cues to the errors, the higher the ratio of learner self-correction achieved. That is, learners demonstrated that they could activate their linguistic competence to some extent in order to correct their own errors in written English compositions.

Introduction

Error analysis is one of the major topics in the field of second language acquisition research. Learner errors are seen as a natural and indispensable part of the learning process. They are also seen as inevitable, since learners are encouraged to explore the target language. What, then, is the teachers role in relation to error in classroom learning? What kind of corrective feedback is effective? What kinds of teacher cues are most effective in enabling students to correct their own errors in English composition? What role does self-correction have, and how can it be encouraged? Chaudron (1988) states that it seems extremely difficult to verify the effect of correction. In spite of this difficulty, most students expect and want their teachers to help them to correct their own errors so that the chance of recurrence is reduced. The issues outlined so far were taken up in a study using written compositions, teacher cues, and student self-correction as data. The findings of the study are used to propose some pedagogical implications for the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language in the classroom.

Error treatment in the EFL classroom

There has been a well-documented debate about the relative values of error treatment. Allwright (1975) suggested that learner errors should be corrected if learners cannot correct themselves, and that teachers need coherent policies for correction and clear classroom strategies in order to avoid confusion in their learners. Hendrickson (1978), in an overview of the research available at that time, concluded that error correction does improve the proficiency of EFL/ESL learners, if they are errors that inhibit communication, stigmatize the learner, and appear frequently. Long (1977), however, argued that error treatment is not so important, and others have expressed similar doubts about the effectiveness of errorcorrection (Krashen, 1982; Krashen and Terrell, 1983). Their argument is that the errors made by learners are part of a natural process of language
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learning, and simply indicative of a certain stage of their interlanguage which will develop naturally into more accurate and appropriate forms. Language teachers, however, are under pressure from the expectations of their students to treat error. They have to consider learning situations, learner types, purposes of lessons, and the nature of particular errors. It is clearly a significant issue for the EFL teacher to decide whether to treat errors, which errors to treat, and how to treat them most effectively.
Error correction and error feedback

Long (1977) made a useful distinction between error correction and error feedback. According to his definition, error feedback is error detection, and while it is designed to promote correction it is not correction in itself. Correction he viewed as describing the hoped-for result of feedback on errors (Chenoweth, Day, Chun, and Luppescu, 1983). In this paper the term error feedback is used to refer to teacher cues or hints which are given to learners to encourage self-correction. In the process of language learning, learners sometimes notice some of their errors by themselves, through the strategy of monitoring, and they can also correct some of their errors when other people, such as teachers or peers, give them cues or hints about them. Those learners who are able to correct their own errors can activate their linguistic competence (that is, linguistic knowledge). Unfortunately there is little research in this area. The study that follows takes up the idea that the teacher can provide the learner with the opportunity to try to self-correct without further help. It assumes that learners are able to apply the rules they have learned in order to correct their own errors. This study will focus on the learner self-correction of errors made in EFL written compositions provided by Japanese college students. The learners ability to self-correct was investigated in order to find out how far they could correct their own errors with the help of teacher cues. The subjects sampled in this study were sixty-two freshman students who had been studying EFL in junior and senior high schools in Japan for six years, three to five classes a week, fifty minutes per class. The subjects were given sixty minutes to translate twenty-three Japanese sentences into English. In order to elicit data, the grammatical subject of each sentence was printed in English at the beginning of each sentence on the answer sheet. Thus, written data were elicited which focused on learner errors in nine English grammatical morphemes: article, auxiliary, copula, regular past, irregular past, possessive, plural, progressive, and third person singular. In the test procedure to elicit data, each grammatical morpheme had five or six obligatory occurrences. After the original test papers were collected the teacher took three photocopies of each of the answer sheets. The procedure to elicit data was as follows:
Taka-Yoshi Makino

Self-correction and linguistic competence

Experimental design and hypothesis

Subjects

Grammatical morphemes examined

Data elicitation

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1. Copy (1): the first copy was returned without any teacher cues (that is, with no indication of errors at all). The students were asked to find their own errors on the sheets, and as far as possible to correct them by themselves. 2. Copy (2): this was returned with (X) marks in front of any ungrammatical sentence. The students had to find the errors and correct them by themselves: In this case, it was easier for the students to find errors than with the first copy. 3. Copy (3): the third copy was returned with teacher cue(s) indicating where the grammatical error(s) had been made (in this case, by underlining). Once again the students had to correct their own errors.
Scoring

The subjects had to correct their own errors in tests which were given every other week. Elicited compositions were focused on the nine grammatical morphemes listed above. The scoring criteria were as follows: a. My brother study English. b. My brother studys English c. My brother studying English d. My brother was study English. e. My brother did study English. f. My brother did studied English. g. My brother studied English. h. My brother studyed English. 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.5
0.5

1.0 1.0

A characteristic of these criteria was that partial points (0.5) were given to answers such as did study or did studied.
Major hypothesis

The hypothesis tested in this study is that the greater the detail of the cues (or hints) to the errors, the higher the ratio of self-correction. I assume that if the learners are given some help (in this case, some teacher cues on their errors), they may be able to correct the errors by themselves. In other words, they have to activate their linguistic competence to some extent in order to find and correct their own errors. The data collected were classified into four groups: original (0), first copy (l), second (2) and third copy (3). The number of the storable test sheets answered was sixty-two (eighty-six students in the English class actually participated in the study as subjects, but only sixty-two students attended all of the four class periods).

Results and discussion

Plural Possessive Regular past 3rd pers. sing. Irregular past

61.8 62.5 57.7 53.5 50.8

64.3 65.5 61.6 55.8 54.9

76.1 68.0 64.1 65.8 60.9

82.1 75.8 78.1 75.5 70.4

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As can be seen in the table, the ratio of correction for all morphemes increased from two to twelve percent at each stage (0 to 1, 1 to 2, and 2 to 3). That is, students were able to monitor and correct their own errors for the morphemes. The findings of this study show that the ratio of plural and third person singular increased a great deal between stages 1 and 2, and the inflectional morphemes such as plural, possessive, regular past, third person singular, and irregular past jumped remarkably (about ten per cent each) between stages 2 and 3. Generally speaking, all subjects could correct their own errors to some extent, even if no cue was given to the errors in the first copy. The more detailed cues led to a higher ratio of error correction. Moreover, the teacher cues of indicating error by underlining had a marked effect on the correction of the inflectional morphemes. That is, the study verified that the cues given made the students use or activate their linguistic competence. Therefore, the hypothesis in this study is supported.
Pedagogic implications
The teachers role

The study showed that learners have some ability to correct their own errors: that is, that they can activate their linguistic competence to do so, even without detailed cues. It was also shown that if cues or hints are given as to the errors, this ability will be activated more efficiently and effectively. Therefore, as Allwright (1975) and Long (1977) point out, it is important for teachers not to correct learner errors or give the right answers to them immediately; giving cues to the students so they can correct their own errors will further activate their linguistic competence. We understand that self-correction gives students an opportunity to consider and activate their linguistic competence, so that they can be active participants in written compositions rather than passive recipients of feedback. It is clear from the study how much students can self-correct with the help of teacher cues, and that more detailed cues lead to a higher ratio of self-correction. This technique of error correction has two advantages: one is that teacher cues give students a chance to reflect on their writing and to pay more attention to the structural forms they have written; the other is that students can activate their linguistic competence in correcting their own errors. They also improve their linguistic creativity through self-correction. Therefore, we can reach the conclusion that self-correction is highly effective with grammatical (especially, morphological) errors. Of course, while teacher correction of learner errors is helpful to some students, self-correction may be more worthwhile to others. Questions for future studies might be: what kinds of cues (or hints) should be given to what proficiency level of students ? Judging from this study, we can suggest that the less detailed cues should be given to more advanced learners and the more detailed cues to less advanced learners. In correcting student errors, teachers should consider different kinds of cues, according to the level of student proficiency in the language classroom.
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Conclusion

Further research on error correction will be necessary if our purpose is to understand and to explain how language learners learn knowledge in the EFL classroom. Continued research should examine corrective feedback (especially, self-correction) both longitudinally and cross-sectionally. Meanwhile, teachers need to develop methods of correcting errors which will help students self-discover, and provide methods in which students learn the language while they are self-discovering. In doing so, learners will activate and improve their linguistic competence and creativity, which are the essentials of language learning.
Received December 1992

References

Allwright, R. L. 1975. Problems in the Study of the

Language Teachers Treatment of Learner Error, in Burt and Dulay (eds.) Burt, M. K. and H. C. Dulay. (eds.) 1975. New
Directions in Second Language Learning, Teaching and Bilingual Education. Selected papers from the Ninth Annual TESOL Convention, Los Angeles, March 1975. Washington, D.C.: TESOL. Chaudron, C. 1984. The effects of feedback on students composition revisions. RELC Journal 15:1-14. Chaudron, C. 1988. Second Language Classroom. Research on Teaching and Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chenoweth, N. A., R. R. Day, A. E. Chun, and S. Luppescu. 1983. Attitudes and preferences of non-native speakers to corrective feedback. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 6:79-87. Hendrickson, J. M. 1978. Error correction in foreign language teaching: recent theory, research, and practice. Modern Language Journal 62:387-98. Krashen, S. 1982. Principles and Practice in Second

Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Krashen, S. and C. Terrell. 1983. Natural Approach. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Long, M. 1977. Teacher Feedback on Learner Error: Mapping Cognitions, in Brown, Yorio, and Crymes (eds.)

The author

Taka-Yoshi Makino is Professor of English (TEFL) at Hokkaido University of Education, Hokkaido, Japan. He holds an MA degree in TEFL from Southern Illinois University (USA) and a PhD in Educational Linguistics from the University of New Mexico (USA). He has published papers on ESL/EFL teaching and learning. translated English books (both SLA research and EFL methodology) into Japanese and compiled English textbooks for Japanese high school and college students. His current interests include second language acquisition (especially error analysis), foreign language teaching methodology, and pedagogical and communicative grammar.

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