Monitoring and feedback

by Toni Coutelo

Monitoring, correcting and giving feedback

Monitoring: observing learners when they are engaged in individual, pair work or group work activities.

Correcting: indicating, correcting/providing opportunity for self-correction and peer correction, and/or marking errors or mistakes.

Giving feedback: providing learners with information on their performance.

Why monitor?

• To check that learners understand the activity/task and are fully engaged in it.

• To notice how learners are performing in order to provide the students with the most useful feedback.

Reasons checklist• You need to be aware how learners are interacting with

each other. Noticing good or bad group dynamics is clearly relevant to future activities.

• You need to know when an activity has run its course and should be brought to an end.

• You need to be available to deal with learners’ queries about language or the activity.

• Learners expect you to monitor. They see it as an important part of your responsibility, and if they sense you aren’t listening to them or that you aren’t interested in what they have to say, this could have an adverse effect on their motivation or their relationship with you.

• With monolingual groups in particular, you need to check that learners aren’t using their own language unnecessarily.

Ways of monitoring

• Walking around the room.

• Standing in front of/behind pairs and groups.

• Monitor from a distance.

Giving feedback

“Feedback is all about error correction”

(G.S)

Do you agree with it?

>> Yes: Expand on that idea.

>> No: What is feedback all about?

Giving feedback

It consists of error correction and praise for what students have achieved linguistically

and communicatively

(Roseli SERRA: 2009, p.1)

Feedback should:

• be prompt, closely following the activity or event

• contain encouragement

• be specific about why something was good or was not up to standard and what the student can do about it

• not focus on too many different aspects at the same time

• be unambiguous and clear.Rogers, J. (2001) Adults learning. Buckingham: Open University Press

Ways of giving feedback

• Start by giving the class some positive feedback on what learners achieved.

• Give learners a minute to think about their work.

• Extract the maximum benefit from an activity by: demonstrating how the activity can be expanded.

• Use the e-board/white board.

• Individual short mini –meetings with your SS

• Learner diaries

• Tutorials/ Counseling

• Encourage SS to take risks

Error treatment

1. Are errors something to be avoided?

2. What do you think causes errors?

3. What sort of errors do your students make?

Mistakes:

• 1. Grammar, morphology and syntax ( tenses, plurals, word order, verb

• patterns, etc.)

• 2. Lexis: words and phrases

• 3. Style/ appropriateness

• 4. discourse organization: the way text is connected

• 5. pronunciation: sounds, stress, rhythm

Good practice1. Think about all your classes and put them in order of how much

error correction you think they need, from the class most in need of error correction (e.g. students stuck on the Intermediate plateau or ones who will be writing dissertations in English) at the top of the list to the class that least needs it (students who pause for a long time before they speak or students who had lots of grammar but little speaking practice in their previous English lessons) at the bottom of the list.

2. Write error correction stages on your lesson plan.3. Have a gap at the top of your lesson plan that says "error correction

stage(s)" 4. Set a target for how many errors you will correct, how many error

correction stages you will have and how much time you will spend on error correction and write it at the top of your lesson plan.

5. Make a list of error correction techniques you would like to try, e.g. getting students to bet on whether each sentence is right or wrong.

6. Always monitor for student errors and write them down, especially during pair and group work when you are freer to do so.

7. Write down your personal criteria for when you will correct errors.