User:Monicanena/review

second article review
Review of Matinez Esteban Noelias' and Roca de Larios Julio's The Use of Models as a Form of Written Feedback to Secondary School Pupils of English.

The article contains the results of Martinez, E & Roca, L. about noticing and its relation with composition and feedback in individual and collaborative EFL writing. Learners learn when they pay conscious attention to language (noticing). Therefore, feedback on writing should help learners to focus their attention on these linguistic features by comparing their production with the target language in order to produce correct forms. Modeling is a type of written feedback that may provide learners with opportunities of noticing. It consist on learners producing writing and subsequently comparing their products with a model written by a native speaker in order to notice similarities and differences between their interlanguage and the target language. Modeling feedback was applied in this study in order to answer the following questions: What aspects of language do L2 learners notice while writing an original composition individually and in pairs? What do individual students and pairs notice as they compare their original texts to native speaker models? And what are the effects of stage one and stage two noticing on subsequent revisions?

The participants were 17 Spanish students from third year of secondary education that had low-intermediate level. Five students did the task individually and twelve were grouped in six. The study consisted in three stages, in the first stage the students wrote a story according to a picture they saw and they took notes about their difficulties they were having, in the second stage students were provided with two native-speakers models to help them review their original texts, and in the third stage students rewrote their texts. In spite of the participants’ age and level, they noticed their linguistic needs and found solutions in the native-speakers’ models. Even though students found a few solutions and they didn’t incorporate all of them in their rewriting, they noticed ways to express ideas that they actually incorporated in their final product. Finally students that worked in collaboration noticed and incorporated more features than students that worked individually.

Feedback plays an important role in the composition process because it helps students to notice their needs and weaknesses in order to overcome them. Different types of feedback can be applied to writing production, for example reformulation and modeling. On one hand, reformulation is when a teacher or a native speaker rewrites learners’ product but keeping the original meaning intact. Then, learners are able to contrast their product with a reformulation of their original composition in order to notice errors (Santos, M., López-Serrano, S., &amp; Manchón, R. 20010). On the other hand, modeling is when learners compare their product with a model written by a native speaker in order to notice errors and similarities. Then, students can take ways of expressions, lexicon, and structures that they can use to correct their original composition. Therefore, modeling gives learners the opportunity not only to compare their product but to rewrite it using linguistic features from the native speaker product.

EFL teachers may be hesitant about what type of feedback to apply in order to correct writing production. Modeling is a form of feedback teachers can use. According to the results of this study, modeling seems to have some advantages, for example, it allow learners to notice errors or linguistic futures they can use to express the iades they want to express,and learners are also able to rewrite and improve their original work. Therefore, teachers should consider modeling as a very good option to help learner to improve their writing skill.However the success of this of feedback or another may depends on the characteristics and context of learners. References.

Santos, M., López-Serrano, S., &amp; Manchón, R. (20010). The differential effect of two types of direct written corrective feedback on noticing and uptake: reformulation vs. error correction. International Journal of English Studies, 10(1), 131-154

first article review
Review of Kubota Miko’s The Role of Negative Feedback on the Acquisition of the English Dative Alternation by Japanese College Students of EFL.

This article contains the results of Miko’s study about the role of different negative feedback forms in learning English as a foreign language. Negative feedback is when the teacher gives information to the learner that his production was inappropriate or wrong in some way. The different types of negative feedback may be mainly classified into two: explicit negative feedback and implicit negative feedback. In the first one, the subject is told the error and is informed about the correct linguistic form. In the second one, the subject is told the correct answer without any explanation about linguistic features. These types of feedback were experimented in the different groups in order to answer three main questions. What kinds of negative feedback will lead to the reformulation of subjects’ grammatical knowledge in the feedback items? What kinds of negative feedback will help subjects extract linguistic generalizations in the guessing items from the feedback? Do the experimental groups perform better after receiving negative feedback?

Participants involved five groups of twenty junior college students each one. All subjects took three tests: one pre-test and two post-tests. After applying the first test, each group received a different type of negative feedback: Group A received explicit negative feedback by information about grammatical rules, group B was told the answers were incorrect, group C received implicit negative feedback when they were told the correct answers, group D was asked if the answers were correct, and group Z, that was the comparison group, didn’t received feedback. The feedback session was carried out just in the first half of the items and the second-half of the items were supposed to be corrected by making linguistic generalizations. Then the first post-test was applied to check subject improvement after feedback and the second post-test was applied one month after to check effective learning after a period of time. The results were that group C out performed comparison group, group A and C out performed group B, all groups did better in the post tests than in the pre test, group B experienced the least effective learning after a period of time.

Feedback is a very important part of the learning process because it helps students to recognize errors and correct them. There are different types of feedback that teachers may apply in classroom. According to the results negative feedback, either implicit or explicit, has an effect on EFL learners. In contrast to group that didn’t receive feedback at all, the other groups that received feedback made some linguistic generalizations and experimented effective learning. However, there is a difference between explicit and implicit negative feedback. However groups that received explicit explanation of linguistic features performed better than the groups that received implicit explanation. You need a citation in this paragraph.

It is worth to mention that in Miko’s study, feedback was given in their native language that was Japanese, and in individual form. If teachers consider the characteristics and context of Mexican students, then the main question for teachers would be: What type of negative feedback may result in a better performance from EFL learners in each particular context? Acoording to Miko, explicit negative feedback has better results than implicit. In contrast, Aliakbari, M. &amp; Toni, A. (2009) say in their study that indirect coded correction’ feedback as better results than ‘direct correction’ feedback. However the use of the correct type of feedback depends on the characteristics and context of the students, but what is important is that either one type of feedback or another, feedback helps students to learn and improve language.

References.

Aliakbari, M., &amp; Toni, A. (2009). On the effects of error correction strategies on the grammatical accuracy of the Iranian English learners. Pan-Pacific Associeation of Applied Linguistics, 13(1), 99-112.