Using Error Correction Code to Improve Student’s Writing Skills in English Classrooms



Selection of a correct way to give students feedback on their errors in writing has proved to be a complex task for researchers in language pedagogy. Despite the fact that, a lot of studies have been carried out to examine this issue, the teachers are still following their own way of providing error feedback. The present study with 12 students of grade 8 proves that students prefer coded feedback more as teachers show the error and its type by using a certain code or symbol. This study also proves that the students get advantage more from taking coded feedback over non-coded feedback.

Key words: Error Correction Code (ECC), feedback, Error analysis, Self-correction, Peer-correction.

1. Introduction.

In this fast-paced world English acquisition is becoming an attribute of modern people who always try to keep up with the times and therefore, the demand is rising for people who speak and write in English accurately. Speaking and writing are productive skills and much more difficult rather than reading and listening skills as a lot of people struggle to produce speech orally or in written form. In fact, people who are learning English language are afraid of saying something in a wrong way, making mistakes and build obstacles from fears of being disgraced, shamed and miss the chance of making errors. This leads to the language barrier and makes it impossible to learn from their mistakes and improve the ability of reflection. Teachers are seeking different methods and techniques to deal with students’ incompetence in expressing opinions in a verbal and non-verbal forms.

In this case error analyses and error correction are considered effective techniques in teaching both speaking and writing skills. For instance, as indicated by the Syllabus for English in Hong Kong claims that the error correction, «which is a list of grammatical items such as nouns, articles, prepositions and etc, is a typical error feedback method in the ESL lessons». Using ECC is accepted to be valuable procedure of helping students to correct their own errors, as students need educator's direction in recognizing the nature of their errors. Furthermore, it is proved that students get less opportunity to be engaged actively in the lessons and have little chance to learn how to write correctly with appropriate spelling, punctuation, grammar, text structure and word order in traditional teacher-centered lessons. S a result, students make different errors in their writing works, and failure to respond to students’ errors can be gradually resulted in fossilization, which is, the state where the errors become a permanent feature of the learners’ interlanguage. In addition, ECC makes it easy for teachers to mark and provide feedback on students’ writings as they do not need to write the correct form of the error which allows students to work independently, improves noticing skills and develops students’ ownership in learning, as students become more independent in recognizing, analyzing and correcting the errors.

The written works of students in grade 8 C indicated that they are experiencing difficulties to write essays, articles, and letters as they make various grammar and spelling errors. The proof of this statement can be seen in the results of summative assessment papers for previous year where the scores for writing skills are considered to be the lowest relative to the other three skills. Furthermore, it was seen that errors of some students are turning out to be fossilization, that is, when mistakes become a permanent component of the student's interlanguage. This problem has been discussed in our department meetings as well as during the joint planning with English teachers working in 8 grades.

It was found that the conventional method of correcting errors where teachers cross out the word with a mistake and compose the right type of the word is not effective since they are typically overlooked by students. This problem was also addressed with other high school teachers who were able to resolve this challenge in their teaching experience and they suggested using the Error Correction Code as a method for teaching students recognition capacity, correcting their errors and preventing them from making the same mistakes while writing and speaking in the future.

Here, the educator did the Lesson Study, to discover students' preferences feelings in correcting their errors and answer the research question, which asks “How to develop writing skills through Error Correction Code and different forms of feedback in grade 8 C?”. The aim of this study is to measure the effectiveness of ECC in improving writing and skills among the students in grade 8 and develop their ownership in learning.

2. Literature review:

During the study of methods and techniques to improve the students’ writing skills the questions such as “when to correct?”, “how to correct?” arose among researchers. And the debate had continued for a decade whether giving feedback in ESL and EFL writers can help to improve their writing accuracy. According to Truscott and his supporters correction had little or no effects on student writing. [6,p.305–313] A numerous studies on error correction in L2 and L3 writing lessons have proves that students gain accuracy in writing when they receive error feedback from teacher. In one research observation was done during the 14 week on six ESL students in English proficiency program course by Hyland (2003). The research showed that in most cases students used feedback focusing on form during their revisions to their drafts and was highly valued by them. Moreover, it was found that some language errors may be “treatable” through feedback.

Recent studies on ECC in second language writing, has focused on which types of error correction are effective in treating types of errors. [7, p.217–230]. Comparison has been made between direct and indirect feedback. Direct feedback is used when an instructor provides the correct linguistic form for students (word, morpheme, phrase, rewritten sentence, deleted word [s] or morpheme [s]. On the other hand, Indirect feedback, “occurs when the teacher indicates that an error has been made but leaves it to the student writer to solve the problem and correct the error” [2,p.19]. Indirect feedback implies underlining and coding the errors. Ferris and Roberts (2001) compared these two types of indirect feedback. They figured out that the students who received underlined or coded feedback did slightly better in revising their grammatical errors than the one receiving only underling as the feedback. Both groups were more successful in revising errors than the group receiving no feedback. The outcomes were tested by Chandler (2003), who challenged the results and looked at four types of feedback: direct, description only, underlining with description, and underlining only. In her research, Chandler discovered both direct correction and basic underlining to be more successful than depicting the kind of error in decreasing long term error. She likewise noticed that direct correction worked best for revision. There was no huge contrast between direct correction and underlining of errors. The overview results demonstrated that students favor direct correction since it is the quickest and most straightforward approach to reexamine their linguistic mistakes. However, students felt that they gained more from self-correction when the errors were just underlined. Although the two researches made distinction on various sorts of errors, neither tended with the impact of feedback on the particular kinds of errors. In this way, what's stated in the literature focuses mostly on whether error codes help correct errors. This study aims to examine the usefulness of error codes to help English learners more effectively correct their mistakes.

A Case Study

Aim of the Study

The current study intends to improve the impact of correction symbols on promoting students' capacities to correct their errors and look at the symbols as a system to encourage students to consider their mistakes and to correct them themselves. This method depends on the assumption that when students are actively engaged with the procedure of self-correction, they will demonstrate more inspiration to carry out this responsibility. It is additionally founded on the idea that educators should consider students' mentalities so as to build up a methodology to assess their students' written works.

Hypothesis

In an attempt to investigate the efficacy of using correction symbols to provide feedback in the writing, the instructor hypothesizes that the provision of correction symbols methodology would improve their writing skills.

Participants

The study was conducted in a secondary school of Kazakhstan. Twelve students participated the study. They were all 8 grade students. The lessons were taught by the English teacher. Students of this group have ben already taught grammar sections up to B1 level and basic structures of various writing works such as essays, articles, and letters. After the first term, teacher introduced students with ECC and started applying her method of using correction symbols on the writing of the students of grade 8. That means she gave the students feedback with correction symbols so that they could quickly identify their errors and correct them appropriately.

Participant’s Information:

Student’s Name	Marks Obtained after in Term I _/6
S1	4
S2	5
S3	6
S4	6
S5	5
S6	4
S7	4
S8	5
S9	4
S10	4
S11	4

Method:

There were conducted 3 full lessons with using ECC during this research. Teacher used PPP method to deliver these lessons.

− To introduce EEC students were asked to match sentences with errors and type of errors. This task was completed in pair work since there was a need to support less able learners. At first, students were given 7 minutes to complete the task, but extra 3 minutes were added since it was difficult for a few students to remember codes and to distinguish errors in sentences (a few of them even couldn’t see an error)

− The following activity is called “Peer Error Correction Race” taken from Error Correction Games Book by Ken Lackman. As indicated in this book, this activity helps students to identify errors and efficient for individual and group work. Learners were given the task to write a short essay in a short time. After finishing writing essays they created assessment criteria with the teacher to check the work.

− The instructor then distributed essays of the students in a row, but student A was provided the essay of student C and vice versa as there was a chance for student A to get further experience in defining the error and its form. This task was completed individually, but students lead discussions throughout the process by providing explanations for the errors they made. This task was completed individually, but students lead discussions throughout the process by providing explanations for the errors they made. Also, this task became fully student-centered as every learner noticed and identified errors, which led to correct essay writing.

− When the drafts with error codes were returned to the students, they corrected their errors. They handed in to the instructor the rewritten copies of the essays.

Then, students replied to the questions on the feedback form after rewriting the paragraphs

Data collection:

Following data were collected from the written works of 8 grade students

Data that is collected from the first draft:

Table 1

The number of words they used in their essays	The number of errors they made-SP, VT,SV, voice, punctuation, article, preposition, etc.	%	The number of correction they made after receiving feedback from their peers	%
90–120	11–13	12–11 %	3–5	27–38 %

Interpretation of the result:

The study indicates that the students made different errors. Table 1 shows students' corrected errors after they get feedback. Feedback takes the form of using corrective symbols, and according to these symbols, students provided the correct forms. During the mutual correction of essays Students corrected writings and identified the position and form of errors so that students might differentiate between one form and another. The results obtained have provided proof of the efficacy of correction symbols in enhancing self-correction. Results indicate that the students were more experienced in writing successful essays with the aid of correction symbols offered by the teachers and peers. Students wrote essays using 90–120 words and made 10–13 mistakes in their written paragraphs, and the students corrected 8 mistakes after receiving the feedback with correction symbols. That implies that after receiving the feedback from their peers, they fixed almost 40 per cent of errors. Gradually the students became more confident and active in the writing. They began using new vocabulary to write more sophisticated and logical sentences, because they learned a lot to correct their errors. In fact, their teacher's correction symbols helped them to know about the errors, and also to correct them.

Result of the feedback form:

Most of the students (85 percent) indicated that the error code was useful for helping them to correct errors. Only 10 % of students thought that their instructors would provide correct answers and 5 % of students thought they would detect their errors themselves. They indicated that they enjoyed the usage of error codes, since the codes helped them to locate errors and quickly recognize the sort of errors they made. If they should know what sort of error has been made, they should link to the editing checklist descriptions and compare them with their own mistakes.

Conclusion

Observations from the research and the experience suggest that students like a lot coded feedback, because with the aid of the correction codes, they have the ability to learn about their errors and to correct them. The study also proves that this process of error correction benefits the students a lot as they need to do regular error correction practice. When they collect clear guidance from their teacher, they feel the responsibility to conduct their tasks properly. So this error correcting method involves students in a constant cycle of proofreading, editing and submitting their written work to their teacher, which obviously enhances their general writing skills a lot.

Finally, it can be assumed that teachers would be conscious of the effect of their feedback practices on their pupils by studying their progress in writing and recognizing their attitudes. Through this study, the teacher studied the impact of correction symbols on the development of student self-correction. The findings indicate that students are involved in improving their writing skills and correcting their own errors, and also want and their teachers to use the correction codes to mark their written work.

References:

1. Curriculum Development Committee (CDC) 1983. Syllabus for English (Forms IV).The Government Printer, Hong Kong.
2. Ferris, D. and Roberts, B. (2001) Error feedback in L2 writing classes: How explicit does it need to be? Journal of Second Language Writing, 10, 161–184.
3. Bitchener, J. (2008). Evidence in Support of Written Corrective Feedback. Journal of Second Language Writing, doi: 10.1016/j.jslw.2007.11.004
4. Bitchener, J., Young, S. & Cameron, D. (2005). The Effect of Different Types of Corrective Feedback on ESL Student Writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 14, 191–205.
5. Ferris, D. (1999). The Case for Grammar Correction in L2 Writing Classes: A Response to Truscott (1996). Journal of Second Language Writing, 8(1), 1–11.
6. Kepner, C. G. (1991). An Experiment in the Relationship of Types of Written Feedback to the Development of Second-Language Writing Skills. The Modern Language Journal, 75(3), 305–313.
7. Hyland, F. (2003). Focusing on Form: Student Engagement with Teacher Feedback. System, 31(2), 217–230