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Learner sel f -c orrec t ion in EFLw r i t t en c omposi t i onsTaka-Yoshi MakinoThe purpose of this paper is to investigate to what degree teacher cues or hintshelp their students correct their own errors in EFL written compositions, andwhat kinds of cues are more effective in self-correction. The sixty-twoJapanese college students who were sampled were required to correct theirerrors by themselves, using the cues provided by their teachers. The finding ofthe study was that the more detailed the cues to the errors, the higher the ratioof learner self-correction achieved. That is, learners demonstrated that theycould activate their linguistic competence to some extent in order to correcttheir own errors in written English compositions.

I n t roduc t ion Error analysis is one of the major topics in the field of second languageacquisition research. Learner errors are seen as a natural andindispensable part of the learning process. They are also seen asinevitable, 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 cuesare most effective in enabling students to correct their own errors inEnglish composition? What role does self-correction have, and how can itbe encouraged? Chaudron (1988) states that it seems extremely difficultto verify the effect of correction. In spite of this difficulty, most studentsexpect and want their teachers to help them to correct their own errors sothat the chance of recurrence is reduced.The issues outlined so far were taken up in a study using writtencompositions, teacher cues, and student self-correction as data. The findingsof the study are used to propose some pedagogical implications for theteaching and learning of English as a foreign language in the classroom.

Error t rea tm ent in There has been a well-documented debate about the relative values ofthe EFL error treatment. Allwright (1975) suggested that learner errors should beclassroom corrected if learners cannot correct themselves, and that teachers need

coherent policies for correction and clear classroom strategies in order toavoid confusion in their learners. Hendrickson (1978), in an overview ofthe research available at that time, concluded that error correction doesimprove the proficiency of EFL/ESL learners, if they are errors thatinhibit communication, stigmatize the learner, and appear frequently.Long (1977), however, argued that error treatment is not so important, andothers have expressed similar doubts about the effectiveness of error-correction (Krashen, 1982; Krashen and Terrell, 1983). Their argument isthat the errors made by learners are part of a natural process of languageELT Journal Volume 47/4 October 1993 Oxford University Press 1993 337

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Error correctionand errorfeedback

Self-correctionand linguistic

competence

Experimentaldesign andhypothesis

Subjects

Grammaticalmorphemes

examined

Data elicitation

learning, and simply indicative of a certain stage of their interlanguagewhich will develop naturally into more accurate and appropriate forms.Language teachers, however, are under pressure from the expectations oftheir students to treat error. They have to consider learning situations,learner types, purposes of lessons, and the nature of particular errors. It isclearly a significant issue for the EFL teacher to decide whether to treaterrors, which errors to treat, and how to treat them most effectively.Long (1977) made a useful distinction between error correction and errorfeedback. 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 onerrors (Chenoweth, Day, Chun, and Luppescu, 1983). In this paper theterm error feedback is used to refer to teacher cues or hints which aregiven to learners to encourage self-correction.In the process of language learning, learners sometimes notice some oftheir errors by themselves, through the strategy of monitoring, and theycan also correct some of their errors when other people, such as teachersor peers, give them cues or hints about them. Those learners who are ableto 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 thelearner with the opportunity to try to self-correct without further help. Itassumes that learners are able to apply the rules they have learned in orderto correct their own errors.This study will focus on the learner self-correction of errors made in EFLwritten compositions provided by Japanese college students. Thelearners ability to self-correct was investigated in order to find out howfar they could correct their own errors with the help of teacher cues.The subjects sampled in this study were sixty-two freshman students who hadbeen 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 givensixty minutes to translate twenty-three Japanese sentences into English.In order to elicit data, the grammatical subject of each sentence wasprinted in English at the beginning of each sentence on the answer sheet.Thus, written data were elicited which focused on learner errors in nineEnglish 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 fiveor six obligatory occurrences.After the original test papers were collected the teacher took threephotocopies of each of the answer sheets. The procedure to elicit data wasas follows:

338 Taka-Yoshi Makino

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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 theirown errors on the sheets, and as far as possible to correct them bythemselves.2. Copy (2): this was returned with (X) marks in front of anyungrammatical sentence. The students had to find the errors andcorrect them by themselves: In this case, it was easier for the studentsto find errors than with the first copy.

3. Copy (3): the third copy was returned with teacher cue(s) indicatingwhere the grammatical error(s) had been made (in this case, byunderlining). Once again the students had to correct their own errors.

Scoring The subjects had to correct their own errors in tests which were givenevery other week. Elicited compositions were focused on the ninegrammatical morphemes listed above. The scoring criteria were asfollows:a. My brother study English.b. My brother studys Englishc. My brother studying Englishd. 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.

0.00.00.00.00.50.51.01.0

A characteristic of these criteria was that partial points (0.5) were given toanswers 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 thatif the learners are given some help (in this case, some teacher cues on theirerrors), they may be able to correct the errors by themselves. In otherwords, they have to activate their linguistic competence to some extent inorder to find and correct their own errors.

Results and The data collected were classified into four groups: original (0), first copydiscussion (l), second (2) and third copy (3). The number of the storable test sheetsanswered was sixty-two (eighty-six students in the English class actually

participated in the study as subjects, but only sixty-two students attendedall of the four class periods).

Plural 61.8 64.3 76.1 82.1Possessive 62.5 65.5 68.0 75.8Regular past 57.7 61.6 64.1 78.13rd sing.ers. 53.5 55.8 65.8 75.5Irregular past 50.8 54.9 60.9 70.4

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As can be seen in the table, the ratio of correction for all morphemesincreased from two to twelve percent at each stage (0 to 1, 1 to 2, and 2 to3). That is, students were able to monitor and correct their own errors forthe morphemes. The findings of this study show that the ratio of plural andthird person singular increased a great deal between stages 1 and 2, andthe inflectional morphemes such as plural, possessive, regular past, thirdperson singular, and irregular past jumped remarkably (about ten per centeach) between stages 2 and 3.Generally speaking, all subjects could correct their own errors to someextent, even if no cue was given to the errors in the first copy. The moredetailed cues led to a higher ratio of error correction. Moreover, theteacher cues of indicating error by underlining had a marked effect on thecorrection of the inflectional morphemes. That is, the study verified thatthe cues given made the students use or activate their linguisticcompetence. Therefore, the hypothesis in this study is supported.

Pedagogic The study showed that learners have some ability to correct their ownimplications errors: that is, that they can activate their linguistic competence to do so,

The teachers role even without detailed cues. It was also shown that if cues or hints aregiven as to the errors, this ability will be activated more efficiently andeffectively. Therefore, as Allwright (1975) and Long (1977) point out, it isimportant for teachers not to correct learner errors or give the rightanswers to them immediately; giving cues to the students so they cancorrect their own errors will further activate their linguistic competence.

Learner self- We understand that self-correction gives students an opportunity tocorrection consider and activate their linguistic competence, so that they can beactive participants in written compositions rather than passive recipients

of feedback. It is clear from the study how much students can self-correctwith the help of teacher cues, and that more detailed cues lead to a higherratio of self-correction. This technique of error correction has twoadvantages: one is that teacher cues give students a chance to reflect ontheir writing and to pay more attention to the structural forms they havewritten; the other is that students can activate their linguistic competencein correcting their own errors. They also improve their linguisticcreativity through self-correction. Therefore, we can reach the conclusionthat self-correction is highly effective with grammatical (especially,morphological) errors.

Levels of Of course, while teacher correction of learner errors is helpful to someproficiency students, self-correction may be more worthwhile to others. Questions forfuture studies might be: what kinds of cues (or hints) should be given to

what proficiency level of students ? Judging from this study, we cansuggest that the less detailed cues should be given to more advancedlearners and the more detailed cues to less advanced learners. Incorrecting student errors, teachers should consider different kinds of cues,according to the level of student proficiency in the language classroom.Taka-Yoshi Makino

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

ReferencesAllwright, R. L. 1975. Problems in the Study of theLanguage Teachers Treatment of Learner Error,in Burt and Dulay (eds.)Burt, M. K. and H. C. Dulay. (eds.) 1975. NewDirections in Second Language Learning,Teaching and Bilingual Education. Selectedpapers from the Ninth Annual TESOL Convention,Los Angeles, March 1975. Washington, D.C.:TESOL.Chaudron, C. 1984. The effects of feedback onstudents composition revisions. RELC Journal15:1-14.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 ofnon-native speakers to corrective feedback.Studies in Second Language Acquisition 6:79-87.Hendrickson, J. M. 1978. Error correction inforeign language teaching: recent theory, research,and practice. Modern Language Journal62:387-98.Krashen, S. 1982. Principles and Practice in Second

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

The authorTaka-Yoshi Makino is Professor of English (TEFL)at Hokkaido University of Education, Hokkaido,Japan. He holds an MA degree in TEFL fromSouthern Illinois University (USA) and a PhD inEducational Linguistics from the University of NewMexico (USA). He has published papers on ESL/EFLteaching and learning. translated English books (bothSLA research and EFL methodology) into Japaneseand compiled English textbooks for Japanese highschool and college students. His current interestsinclude second language acquisition (especially erroranalysis), foreign language teaching methodology,and pedagogical and communicative grammar.

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