What are some of the best or most effective ways you've found of giving feedback to your students or doing error correction?

Sneaky tricks to turn teacher-centred feedback into student-centred feedback for a fun activity that uses all the skills.
I feel the idea of feedback during error correction a loaded answer, as it is always different for the students you are teaching and where you are teaching. For example, in one country I taught, as the teacher, you were expected to give feedback. However, when I worked in another country, it was more of a collaborative effort and no one wanted to be told they were wrong by a teacher. Some students react differently to teacher-feedback - some need it, some hate it. For young learners, especially teens, they like the independence of doing something on their own and/or with the help of their peers, rather than a teacher. Incorporating a bit of classroom management and putting students into teams helps when it comes to student-led feedback. A well-structured lesson, where the teacher is passively in control, can result in some amazing student-led feedback. I find this more helpful with writing tasks, as peer-reviewing can be done as homework and feedback can be done in class, turning it into a speaking activity (with some great real-world opinion-giving phrases and vocab). Adults can be trickier, as some people are used to a teacher-centred world in the classroom and others do not want to be corrected by someone who is younger than them (if you are a young teacher teaching a group of mature adults), so a sneaky approach to teacher-centred feedback is opening it up to the class. Give your responses to questions and then open it up to the class for discussion, satisfying every student's need eg That sounds correct - what do you all think about that? Do you all think it sounds correct? Scaffolding is the key here - build up the lesson slowly in a teacher-centred way but as the activity progresses, slowly take away your input. Monitoring allows you to still be in control and take a back-seat driver role. Furthermore, peer-reviewing often works better than self-review as, even as a native speaker, it is not always so easy to see your own mistakes. This one of my favourite activities. By the end of the activity they have: - worked together. - used meaningful negotiation language. - practiced their listening and comprehension skills. - practiced their writing and speaking skills. - done some student-led error correction. - have something to show for their work. 1. Put students in groups (4-5 students max if you can). 2. Do a dictogloss https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/dictogloss I like finding short paragraphs from relevant news articles that are at their level (easy to find online). Read it out to the class and ask them to take notes. Read it three times. After every round, monitor students and give them help if needed. This utilises peer-work and collaboration. It also works different skills, like listening, comprehension and negotiating language (ie "I heard this" and "I thought I heard this, not this.") 3. After they have completed their notes, ask each team to write it up on the board. For a more challenging exercise, you could get them to 'complete' the story of how they think, as a group, the story ends. Again, monitor in the background. 4. Once the paragraphs are up on the board*, give each team a different coloured pen and ask them to correct the team to their right's work. 5. After they have corrected one team's work, ask them to go around to each paragraph and see if all the corrections are correct or if they need to add more. 6. Once everyone has been peer-reviewed, you give your final verdict. If you've been monitoring well, you know the most frequently made errors, so address these with the class first, opening up questions/queries to the students for their feedback (see above). If there are interesting errors that you want to draw attention to (gerunds are normally a culprit) you can also address those. 7. I always try and finish an activity by telling students the great things they have practiced, as well as encouragement about how well they did and what they achieved. *If you don't have a whiteboard/blackboard, large pieces of paper work just as well. Just pin them up around the classroom so it gets students up and out of their seats. Studies have shown that students react best to student-led feedback and is better for their learning, so allow students to do the work for you. It's fun and it's a more enjoyable way of teaching because students organically create an great learning environment without you having to force it (or come up with new ways to do it!).
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