E-Portfolio Fatin

Summary of “Corrective Feedback in the Chatroom: An experimental study” by Shawn Loewen and Rosemary Erlam

The article “Corrective Feedback in the Chatroom: An experimental study” by Shawn Loewen and Rosemary Erlam, taken from Computer Assisted Language Learning(19), 2006 is a research intend to measure the effectiveness of two types of corrective feedback on the acquisition of past tense in a synchronous CMC context. Research in this area is lack in evidence whether the learners improve their language production instead of just producing more language. This partial replication study of the same face-to-face environment significantly tests learners’ improvements of grammatical forms through the correction of past tense errors. This research is a qualitative research based on the fact that it investigates learners’ quality of performance of form-based sentence structure in a meaning-based task. Moreover, this research concerns on answering the research questions which are:

1. Does corrective feedback on English regular past tense during online meaning-focused tasks lead to an increase in learner’s performance on timed and untimed grammaticality judgement tests?
2. Is there a difference in the effectiveness of more implicit and more explicit types of feedback?

It also involves quantitative measurement as the method used in this research is a quasi-experimental design involving a pre-test, treatment, and two post-tests where the scores are calculated using repeated measures ANOVA. The participants are low intermediate learners of L2 English at a private language school in Auckland, New Zealand. They are divided into two classes and the study for each class is being done in different time of administration. The time allocated for the research to be done is two weeks for each class. Based on treatment options, the students of each administration is further be assigned to one of three groups. Group 1 and 3 are in the first administration in January while group 2 and 4 took part in April study. Group 1 and 2 receive recasts feedback and group 3 and 4 receive metalinguistic feedback. The third group serves as the control and do not participate in the online activities. The researchers serve as teacher moderating two groups each in providing recast for one group and metalinguistic feedback for the other. Regular past tense is chosen to be the target structure of feedback. The reasons are because it is an easy structure to be obtained from students in meaning-focused tasks, it is the structure used in the previous face-to-face study so the results can be compared, and it is also a relatively new structure to the learners. Effort is made to ensure the regular past tense do not occur in their lesson in class.

Two activities are given as tasks to the students. Both are ‘focused task’, designed to encourage the use of particular linguistic forms. The first task is to tell story based on a set of pictures and given set of verbs. They are asked to tell their story to other students in the chat room and to listen carefully. The second activity is similar where one of two sets of nine pictures showing either Gavin or Peter day off’s activity are given to each student. The activity aims at the students to identify three same acts of Gavin and Peter.

During the activities, feedback is provided either in recasts forms (Groups 1 and 2) or metalingual information (Groups 3 and 4). A recast is a correct reformulation of the error where teacher responds with the correct past tense form to errors made by the students in the chat room interaction. Metalinguistic, on the other hand, is just a reminder for them to use past tense after error occurs. The research testing instruments portray that the students also took part in a pre-test and two delayed post-tests besides the treatment given. The pre-test occurred two days before the treatment. Post-test 1 took place immediately after the treatment and Post-test 2 occurred two weeks after the treatment. Two grammaticality judgement tests (GJTs), one timed and one untimed is used here. The items used in both tests are identical but the difference would be on the amount of time allocated for the participants to produce interactions. Time is not restricted in the untimed test but 1.8 to 5 seconds of time are given in the timed test. The response times are adjusted to suit the slower processing speed of the L2 learners with 20% more than the native speakers’ median response times.

The analysis for this study calculates the descriptive statistics for past tense items for both GJTs. On timed GJT, the pre-test shows an average of 40% accuracy and a slight increase in post-tests 1 and 2 but never reach over 55%. For the untimed GJT, the pre-test groups average between 55 and 60% accuracy. Repeated measures ANOVA show that there is no significant difference from both tests to the groups or time. Based on the results acquired, the answer to the research questions 1 and 2 are both negative. No increased in learning and no difference in the effectiveness of type of feedback are found.

One of the major reasons for this outcome might be for the fact that the students are beginner, not at a developmental stage where they are ready to learn past tense. The learners also exhibit limited knowledge of regular pat tense –ed for corrective feedback to have any impact on learning. The students are also suspected to lose focus on linguistic forms when the feedbacks given are overlap with other interlocutor’s turns thus reduced the time for immediate treatment. Neither the students nor the whole class are aware of the errors made. This is in contrast to the face-to-face classroom context where the feedback to error is immediate and students are focusing in the class interaction. Another factor is that students are lack of giving uptake in response to the feedbacks given. It can also be noted that the instructor had at times trying too hard to keep the students engaged on task. Students often get carried away with unrelated topics and the instructor does not have the ability to dominate synchronous conversation.

As the findings imply that there is no significant performance as a result of the feedbacks given to the errors made by learners, it can be predicted that the same results might occur in Malaysia education situation. As regular past tense –ed usually is introduced in elementary and lower intermediate textbooks, in Malaysia schools, it is around primary three which is at the age of 9. It means that they basically don’t have knowledge on this because this type of linguistic structure is not among the morphemes that can be acquired early especially for second language learners. Hence, it is not really appropriate to assign students in an informal and spontaneous synchronous CMC by just giving feedback of their errors. Even though students tend to produce more language in chat room environment, less advantage on form-focus exists in it.

Moreover, engaging in synchronous chat room to improve an unfamiliar structure is not an easy task to be implemented both to the teachers and students. Chat room serves more as a tool for meaning-based communication rather than grammatical form-based. The topic of discussion usually will be given the main attention by the students and not on their sentence structure. This is because online chatting is known as informal communication device. Teachers can monitor and give feedbacks but not dominate or decide on the students’ freedom in producing their text as it is a spontaneous act. The students are sometimes somehow unaware of getting distracted with the original task they are supposed to do. Therefore, students’ improvements are hard to achieve unless a more systematic style of teaching be applied here and further research is needed on this. For example, a more detail pre-task planning must be observed in order to grab students’ attention in the intended task.
Analysis of chat room transcript

In this particular chat transcript, in depth analysis on politeness will be done. Generally, this online chatting transcript shows a controlled monitoring of the degree of politeness by all the chatters. The chatters who seem to have the same interest and talk about one discourse for the whole conversations understand and react to each other’s response well. It looks as if they have prepared a very well-planned questions and answers in interacting with each other. The flow of conversations also shows a very smooth pace of communicative situation as a result of the politeness in the discourse.

From the first part of the interaction, the politeness that contributes to the effectiveness of the discourse can already be perceived when MarkP who was just entered the room is acknowledged by the rest of the chatters. As the conversations move on, everyone who entered late now and then will also be acknowledged by at least one person. It shows that they courteously welcome anyone who wants to join the conversation. Even when the others are busy engaging in certain topic of discussion, the one who is in the time was only observing will attend to the newcomer. The same goes when someone is about to leave the conversation, that person informs everyone first and the chatters respond with polite farewell discourse such as ‘see ya’ and ‘later’.

Another thing that is obvious here is that all questions are attended to with pleasure in a very detailed and satisfying manner. Therefore, an increased of participation can be sensed throughout the conversation. Example of well answered question is shown below:
Jon: Can you give us some details about this years’ trip, like where you went, how long
you stayed, and who else came along?
MarkP: My usual travelling partner Dean, Simon and Sam came out on their first trip.
MarkP: The people who came with me were people who applied to come through me
advertising on the web site.
MarkP: We has 18 days and the last 6 of those we spent on Tioman and KL.
Moreover, the chatters do not forget to stay polite in any circumstances throughout the conversation. For example, in realizing that they already troubled MarkP for making him stay longer with lots of question, but still they have some questions left to acquire from him, they express their concern for occupy him longer than they should with the right discourse of politeness. For instance, ‘finally, Mark, I know you have to go…but I have one last question.’ Then, after he has satisfied with all the information and ready to let Mark go, he once again is polite in remembering Mark’s willingness to attend to his question with ‘Ok Mark, I understand you have to go, so thanks for taking the time to share your experiences in Malaysia with us. It’s been a pleasure. We appreciate it!’

When they are in need for further information or clarification, it will be asked in a very polite way such as in using modal, ‘can you give us some details’ and ‘do you know any good source’, etc. The chatters show that they appreciate any information that is given to them in a respectful manner by saying ‘thank you’, giving complement such as ‘WOW, these pics of the trip is great’ or respond with ‘that’s a good idea’, ‘very nice’ and ‘that’s neat’. A more obvious polite discourse used are such as ‘my pleasure’, ‘take care’ and ‘no problem’.Clearly also, the language used is clean without any form of harmful discourse.

The used of emoticons and cryptic language also suggests another polite effect in the conversation.
Jon: WOW, these pics of the trip are great!
MarkP: Glad you like them but it does not do the trip justice, perhaps you can see it for
yourself next year?
Jon: Yes, perhaps J
In this example, MarkP exercises his politeness to Jon who can only see the pictures by inviting Jon to the next trip and Jon shows that he appreciates the concern by adding the smiley emoticon. Later in addressing the latecomer, Jon once again uses smiley as in ‘welcome latecomer! J’ which implies softness in the kind of sarcastic tone used. Cryptic language such as ‘LOL’ which means laugh out loud is also contributes to politeness here as it is used after a joking assumption in ‘being intoxicated usually makes people fall. LOL.’ Jon who conveys this sentence does not really mean to assume MarkP is intoxicated but this is only a joke.

In addition, even though he is leaving because it is already midnight in his place, he does not mind to be preoccupied longer as he realizes the chatters are getting very excited and interested to know more of his experience and information after he has attend to them nicely. Hence, he keeps asking whether anyone has any last question before he go because he wants to make sure that everyone is happy and gain something beneficial from the topic of discussion. He gives reason first on why he has to leave in his statement ‘Anymore questions as it is getting late here in the UK midnight…’

When he is asked whether he is leaving, he still maintains his politeness with ‘not yet, fire away with your question.’ Then, after a long discussion and he really has to go, still, he asks for any other inquiry when he states ‘any last questions from anybody before I go?’ It can also be clearly notified that he does not mind to answer the same question again by someone else and not one question is left unanswered.

By implying this kind of polite discourse, it can be said that learner participation and social equity are increasing as learner gets satisfactory replied and this leads to greater interest and wonder in exchanging more knowledge with each other.

Reflection

Just like the rest of the assignments given in this course before, I found out that this CMC assignment was another challenging and demanding task in the process of effectively completing it. From the very start of conducting it that are in finding the appropriate journal and chat transcript until the end of the exact assignment, the hardships are always there. First, it is kind of difficult to find the right journal. Then, it is also not an easy task to find a chat transcript on the net. In terms of doing the assignment itself, a deep and thorough analysis are needed in order to arrive at the best understanding to be applied in the summary, reaction and analysis. Towards the end of the semester, it seems like every courses are in great demand of be giving extra priority in the course works. All assignments and presentations are approaching datelines. With this added up in the list, the pressure can be said increasing as well. Time-constraints as a result of many works to be done is also one factor. The most intriguing part, however, would be in the reaction part where we have to provide critical ideas in relating the journal research with the current situation of learning context in Malaysia. I regard this as an interesting work to do as it widened my perspectives towards the latest learning methods and how they can be the chance for students to improve their learning in our country.