Exploratory Practice of Supportive Error Correctionin Intera
【Abstract】Error correction not only involves learners’ linguistic competence, but also their affect, which plays a crucial part in language acquisition. Based on psycholinguistic interactionist theory and social interactionist theory, the present research aims to explore the strategies for supportive error correction in college EFL classroom, which help the students’ language learning by correcting their errors and providing positive support to students’ affect as well.【Key Words】classroom interaction;error correction;affect1. Introduction Research on classroom SLA shows that teacher-student interaction creates optimum environments to act on learners’ internal mechanisms and therefore facilitates L2 learning (Long, 1996；Swain, 1995). Feedback, as an important part of classroom interaction, is provided by the teacher to make evaluations of and give comments on students’ performance. The present paper focuses on error correction, which specifically refers to teachers’ feedback to students’ errors. Research has demonstrated that error correction is a quite complicated issue. On the one hand, it works for language learning by the assumption of calling learners’ attention to the differences between their interlanguage and target language, but on the other hand, the frequent error correction by the teacher may create a sense of failure and frustration among students. To break through this dilemma, the present research attempts to explore the strategies for supportive error correction, which help the students’ learning by correcting their errors and providing positive support to students’affect as well. The research is based on two related but different types of interactionist theories: Psycholinguistic interactionist theory, which explains the relationship between error correction and language acquisition; and social interactionist theory, which focuses on error correction and the learners’affect. 2. Theories2.1 Psycholinguistic interactionist theoriesOne of the most influential hypotheses concerned with the relationship between interaction and learners’ linguistic needs is Long’s Interaction Hypothesis (IH). The early version of IH (1985) is closely associated with Krashen’s (1985) Input Hypothesis which claims that comprehensible input is one of the key elements in second or foreign language development. In 1996, Long offers his revised version of IH, which highlights the contribution of the learners’ internal mechanisms, negotiation and negative evidence to L2 learning. According to IH, Interaction can contribute to acquisition through the provision of negative evidence and through opportunities for modified output. As error correction “constitutes attempt to supply ‘negative evidence’ in the form of feedback that draws learners’ attention to the error they have made” (Ellis, 1994: 584), it can thereby trigger learners’ internal mechanisms, which may further result in modified output. Swain’s (1985, 1995) Output Hypothesis identifies the functions of output where accuracy is concerned. It helps learners to notice the gap between what they want to say and what they can say and enables learners to test out hypotheses about the target language. One way in which this occurs is through the modified output that learners produce following error correction. 2.2 Social Interactionist theoriesSocial interactionist theories advance the role of interaction on L2 acquisition with respect to affective and cognitive environments which are helpful to learners’ second language development. The key construct in interactionist theories is mediation, which refers to “the part played by other significant people in the learners’ lives, who enhance their learning by selecting and shaping the learning experiences presented to them”. (Williams【Exploratory Practice of Supportive Error Correctionin Intera】相关文章：