Internet and
specifically online chat services such as Yahoo instant messenger have gained
remarkable attention from SLA researchers given that more and more people are using
these tools to talk with one another and keep in touch everyday irrespective of
either the place or the distance where they are located at the moment of the
conversation. Interested in the fact that people can also learn to speak
foreign languages if certain conditions meet, Susana Sotillo decides to
investigate corrective feedback through a series of activities that NS and NNS
have to perform in their computers during five forty-five minute collaborative
sessions. Organized between NS-NNS and
NNS-NNS, the students and teachers have to write messages, solve technical
problems, see each other and discuss the topics given by the researcher such as
commenting on a movie or talk about their lives.
As
a summary, the research questions of this investigation pointed out to learn
about:
1) The existence of error
correction in this type of interaction: The researcher proves the existence of
feedback during the development of the activities.
2) The number of correction provided
by NS and NNS teachers: In the table 2, it is
possible to see in a statistic way that NNS-NNS tend to correct more than
NS-NSS. The nature of their correction is explained below.
3)
The type of error corrections (Implicit /
explicit): NNS usually employ explicit corrective feedback whereas NS
prefer using implicit corrective feedback.
4)
The type of language aspect targeted by
the teachers: Grammar and vocabulary are the two most important aspects
considered by the teachers to correct. Pronunciation is relegated to the least
considered aspect of correction.
5)
The existence of successful uptake during
the ECEs: The table 3 shows that
there are 24 occurrences of successful uptake.
6)
The complexity of the moves in the
correction: In the table 3, the data shows that the length of error
corrections tends to be simple in both groups.
Some
things that I learned from this article were:
- It’s possible to provide corrective feedback to language learning students using this tool. In fact there is clear evidence of effective use of recast and successful uptake. If one decided to teach a student this way, it would help to implement the same conditions to guarantee learning.
- NNS teachers use more explicit correction than NS teachers.
- NS teachers tend to avoid being explicit at the time of correcting. Most of the corrective feedback they provide is implicit. They use recast, ask for repetition or ignore the error to privilege communication.
- Yahoo instant messenger (and probably other online chat services) requires a broad-band internet connection to work properly. Features such as the video streaming or the voice recording fail if these conditions do not meet.
- The sample shows that grammar errors are the most important aspect of correction and almost no attention is given to pronunciation.
SOURCE
Sotillo, S. (2013). Corrective feedback via instant messenger learning activities in NS-NNS and NNS-NNS dyads. CALICO journal, 22(3), 467-496.
