Page 23 - The SpeakTeach method - Esther de Vrind

et al., 2013). However, recasts turn out to be not always clear to students; how clear they perceive them to be depends on the context, the instruction, the individual student’s leanings, the linguistic purpose and the length of the recasts (Lyster & Saito, 2010). Sheen (2011) demonstrated that explicit correction and metalinguistic explanation are more effective than recasts because they are clearer. Research has also shown that prompts (signals from the feedback-giver that encourage students to improve their own speaking) are also more effective than recasts (Lyster et al., 2013). Students even seem to prefer not to be explicitly corrected immediately but to be given more time to correct themselves if the mistake is one that they think they can improve themselves (Yoshida, 2008).
At what level?
Based on a literature study, we distinguished four levels on which feedback can be given: on the speaking performance itself, on the student’s understanding of it, on the student’s self- regulation and on affective factors (see right side of Figure 1).
Most feedback from teachers focuses on the students’ speaking performances. However, there may be different underlying causes for the same mistake being made by different speakers: it could, for instance, be a slip, a misconception, lack of knowledge, or it could be due to a failure to master the language component by practice (Bennett, 2011). In order to give adequate feedback that the student will actually take in, teachers must not only focus on the speaking performance itself, but they also need to have insight into the extent to which the student understands and notices the feedback (Schmidt, 1990) (see Figure 1).
Moreover, feedback that only addresses students’ speaking performances can make them dependent on the teacher and it does not encourage them to improve their own speaking skills (self-regulation) (Sadler, 1998). The teacher needs to have insight into the extent to which individual students can assess the discrepancy between the present situation and the desired situation and then make and monitor their own plans to bridge the gap (Sadler, 1998), and the teacher should then also provide feedback on that (feedback on regulation, see Figure 1).
Feedback on students’ speaking performance, understanding and self-regulation is, however, pointless if there are affective obstacles, such as fear of speaking (Cheng, Horwitz & Schallert, 1999), negative attitudes or lack of motivation caused by beliefs about learning (Boekaerts, 2010) that prevent them from accepting feedback. In order to give adaptive
20
21
2