Let me tell you all the story of how I learned the word for "bee" in French. One beautiful spring day, while I was studying abroad in La Rochelle, France, I was sitting in my room of my host family's house enjoying the weather. All of a sudden, a bee flew into my room, landed on my lamp and.... CAUGHT FIRE! In a panic, I rushed down the stairs to tell my host parents in French, "there is a bee on fire in my room". In that moment, I realized that I did not know the word for "bee". So I just started shouting "FIRE" in French. My family rushed up to the room and we threw the lamp out onto the balcony and the day was saved. What lessons did I learn from this? 1. The power of circumlocution. You may not know ALL the words, but you CAN communicate. 2. Because I had noticed what I didn't know in French, I immediately went to learn the word for "bee" and never forgot it. In research, we recognize this phenomenon through the following theories: Output Hypothesis and Noticing Hypothesis. These theories state that individuals must produce language and through production of the language, they will notice gaps (or missing information) in their language abilities. By noticing our language gaps, we are able to improve our proficiency. What does this mean for the classroom? Students must be challenged to use the language in meaningful contexts and be given opportunities to notice gaps in their language. Therefore, teacher feedback should not simply require the students to restate the correct language upon making a mistake, but rather feedback should challenge students to really look at the language they have produced and work through how to improve their performance. Want to give students such feedback? Try not to correct student mistakes for students, but rather highlight and bring attention to those mistakes so that students can come up with the correct structures and forms. Below, Ms. Esmith Centeno of Centerville Elementary School and Mrs. Anne-Marie Cormier-Bausch of Lexington High School share a few ideas on how to get students to think through their performance through meaningful feedback. Check it out!
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