The Pedagogy of Error Correction: Surviving the Written Corrective Feedback Challenge

Should we correct our students’ language errors? Most ESL teachers would answer this question with a resounding Yes while at the same time wondering how to meet the challenge. The collaborative project reported below was designed to provide ESL teacher trainees with an opportunity to experience the ups and downs of providing corrective feedback on writing and develop their awareness in this regard. To this end, the teacher trainees acted as corrective-feedback tutors to high school learners during one school semester. During the course of the project, they kept journals documenting their reflections in regard to this demanding pedagogical practice. Time constraints, motivation, and fear of making mistakes themselves or of not providing adequate guidance to the learners were among the major hurdles encountered by the tutors. In interviews conducted at the end of the project, the tutors offered suggestions for overcoming these difficulties and surviving the corrective-feedback trials and tribulations. The survival tips presented were drawn from the tutors’ recommendations as well as from insights from corrective-feedback research.