UNIT V- MARKING

Marking in language teaching and learning

• Marking in language teaching and learning is a process of evaluating a

student's work, and is a key part of the education process.
• It's a way for teachers to:
• Acknowledge a student's work
• Check outcomes
• Decide what to do next
• Help students improve their work
• and Motivate students to progress.
• Thus, marking provides children with a clear and precise guide to how
to improve their next piece of work and a clear expectation that they
concentrate on improving this aspect as the next small step in making
progress in their learning overall.
tips for effective marking

• Be clear: Make sure you're clear about the purpose of your marking.
• Be detailed: Effective marking includes detail and rarely needs praise.
• Be manageable: Make marking manageable and do it as quickly as
possible.
• Be meaningful: Marking should be meaningful, manageable, and
motivating.
• Provide constructive comments: Comments should be constructive
and offer advice.
• Use a marking guide: A marking guide allows students to self-assess
their work before submitting it.
• Mark in front of students: Select a sample of work and mark it in front
of your students. This can help them make amendments in the future.
types of marking in language teaching and learning

• There are many types of marking in language teaching and learning,

including:
• Triple Impact Marking (TIM): Teachers provide written feedback to
students, who then respond in writing.
• Live marking: Teachers give verbal feedback to students during
lessons, either individually or to small groups.
• Sampling/Five-minute flick learning review: Teachers check
through a sample of books to assess how students performed.
• Removing grades: Teachers provide feedback without a grade.
• Peer and self-assessment: Students assess their own and each
other's work. This helps students develop critical evaluative skills and
understand their learning progress.
Types of marking in language teaching and learning

• Code marking: Teachers create a numbered bank of “what went

well” and “even better if” statements. They write these numbers
at the relevant sections of a student's work, and share them with
the student when they hand the work back.
• Formative assessment: Feedback is provided immediately so
that students can correct their course of action and move on.
• Class marking sheet: A whole class marking sheet with different
sections for praise, missing work, mistakes, commendations, and
a pick of the best pieces of work.
• Marking engaged in dialogue with students: Teachers
engage in dialogue with students through marking to help deepen
their thinking and develop their writing.
ERROR CORRECTION
• The term error ought to refer to a regular pattern in students’ utterance
that does not consistently correspond with the target language model.
• Thus, errors are a component of the actual interlanguage system of a
student, and hence not identified as incorrect by the student.
• Lennon (1991), proposed that an error is a linguistic form that in the
same context would not most probably be produced by a native
speaker of the language.
• An error is “linguistic forms or content that differ from native speaker
norms or facts, and any other behaviour signalled by the teacher as
needing improvement”
ERROR CORRECTION cont…
• a mistake is a fault in learner’s statement that he is able and willing to
correct. On the contrary, an error is something that a learner is neither
able nor inclined to correct.
• Corder (1967) has differentiated between mistake and error. According
to him, the term error signifies something erroneous, related to the
essential knowledge of the language.
• Hence, errors show the present level of a learner’s language
development of a particular language. On the other side, the term
mistake is used for situations in which the learner produces incorrect
form due to a slip of the tongue, memory lapse, typo or a similar cause.
Typology of Errors
• Errors are divided in many different ways throughout the history.
• First of them, Burt (1975), divided errors into two categories: local errors
and global errors.
• Local errors influence a single element in the sentence, but most often are
not a significant barrier to communication.
• These are, for example, errors connected to nouns, verbs inflections, articles
and auxiliaries.
• On the other side, global errors are those which have a significant impact
on the clarity of communication and are “those that affect overall sentence
organization, such as wrong word order, missing, wrong, or misplaced
sentence connectors” (p. 56).
Typology of Errors cont…
• Mackey et al. (2000) classified four types of errrors.
• These four error types are connected to phonology, morphosyntax,
lexis and semantics.
• Phonological error denotes incorrect pronunciation
• Morphosyntactic error denoted a missing -s in a plural form and a
missing preposition in
• Lexical error stood for an unsuitable lexical item
• Semantic error denotes a wrong meaning or formulation.
Divisions of errors by Carl James (1998)
• Carl James (1998), classified four main categories of errors:
• substance errors, discourse errors, lexical errors and grammatical
errors.
• Substance errors contain misspellings, e.g. punctuation or
typographic errors, and mispronunciations which occur when a learner
is trying to speak readily and unprepared.
• There is another differentiation in the mispronunciation category,
whether it is a phonological error - a learner speaks unprepared; or a
miscue - a learner reads an extract from a piece of prose aloud.
Divisions of errors by Carl James (1998) cont…

• Discourse errors, encompass errors that occur in the language

formation (coherence and pragmatics errors), and the reception
(misunderstanding and incorrect processing).
• Pragmatic errors occur when speakers use their linguistic knowledge
and the pragmatic force of their statement is inappropriate for what the
statement is meant to execute or how significant its rhetorical force
ought to be.
• For instance, in English, the way of pronouncing the word please
determines whether it is a command or a polite request.
Divisions of errors by Carl James (1998) cont…

• Lexical errors are a sort of wrong word choice. They include misformations
or distortions, and semantic errors, like collocational errors. Lexical errors
are the most common error type in many learner groups
• Grammatical errors which have two subcategories: morphological errors and the
errors in syntax.
• A morphological error involves a failure to comply with the norm in supplying
any part of any instance of the following word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives or
adverbs. Morphological errors for example, leaving out the third person - s (she
know Paul) or using the past tense -ed too often or anyhow (she camed here).
• Syntax errors have an influence on phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs
with regard to, for instance, phrase structures or inter-sentence cohesion.
Error Correction
• Correction in language teaching and learning, also
known as error correction, is a technique used to help
learners understand and master a target language.
• The goal of error correction is to help learners develop
their language skills, build confidence, and become
more interested in learning the language.
Teachers’ Correction Strategies
• A good strategy for handling oral error feedback can boost student motivation,
build confidence, and create a satisfying learning experience, (Margolis, 2010:
4).
• There are some frequent strategies that can be used in oral error correction.
• a) Explicit correction: The teacher provides the correct form, he or she clearly
indicates that what the student had said was incorrect. In other word, the teacher
corrects the students’ mistakes by informing that it is wrong by saying
• “No. It’s wrong”, “You should say”. For example:
• St: He take the bus to go to school
• T: Oh, you should say he takes.
• He takes the bus to go to school
Teachers’ Correction Strategies cont…

• b) Recast: An implicit correction in which the teacher repeats what the

learner has said replacing the error. Thus, it is when the teacher
reformulates the statement of the student, however he does not
explicitly say where did the error occur.
• In this case, the teacher corrects all or parts of the students’ utterances
using correct form. For instance:
• St: He take the bus to go to school
• T: He takes the bus to go to school
Teachers’ Correction Strategies cont…

• Clarification request: The teacher asks for repetition or reformulation

of what the learner has said. In this way, the teacher indicates that
he/she does not understand the students’ utterance by saying “I’m
sorry”, “I don’t understand”. For instance:
• St: He take the bus to go to school
• T: I’m sorry?
• St: He takes the bus to go to school
Teachers’ Correction Strategies cont…

• d) Metalinguistic feedback: The teacher indicates that there is a

problem and asks if the students can correct it. In this way, the teacher
provides cues such as comments, information, or questions related to
the well-formedness of the students’ utterances. For example:
• St: He take the bus to go to school.
• T: Do we say he take?
• T: How do we say when it forms the third person singular form?
Teachers’ Correction Strategies cont…

• e) Elicitation: it is a correction strategy that prompts the student to self-correct.

Elicitation can be established when the teacher pauses and lets the student complete
the utterance, when the teacher asks an open ended question, and when the teacher
requests a reformulation of the ill-formed utterance. In short, the teacher provides a
sentence and strategically pauses to allow students to “fill in the blank”. For example:
• St: He take the bus to go to school.
• T: He...?
• T: How do we form the third person singular form in English?

• T: Can you correct that?

Teachers’ Correction Strategies cont…

• f) Repetition of error: Repetition is related to the repetition performed

by the teacher. This happens in isolation and student’s erroneous
statement is repeated and usually the teacher uses intonation in order
to point out the error. for example:
• St: He take the bus to go to school.
• T: He take?
strategies for correcting errors in
writing language :
• Delayed correction: Wait until the student has
finished writing before providing feedback.
• Underlining mistakes: Underline mistakes and/or give
clues to the type of mistakes made, then let students
correct the work themselves.
• Use a shorthand: Students and the teacher should
have a common shorthand for correcting mistakes.
• Writing the wrong sentence on the board for discussion
• Using a phonemic chart to point at an incorrect
phoneme
Self-Correction

• Self-correction is a technique where the learners should correct their mistakes themselves by
checking their work carefully. Thhus, self-correction technique is a process in which students
reflect on and evaluate the quality of their work and their learning, know explicitly stated
goals or
• criteria, assess their work for strengths and faults, and update it.
• It means self-correction technique enhances students' knowledge of their work based on the
self-correction
• technique guidance sheet.
• The self-correction technique consists of two basic activities:
• (1) monitoring and evaluating the quality of their thoughts and behavior
• during learning,
• and (2) identifying ways to enhance learners’ understanding and abilities (Mcmillan & Hearn,
2008).
Advantages of self-correction

• There are four advantages of self-correction technique, namely:

• 1. encourages students’ involvement and increases independence and
responsibility
• 2. encourages students to reflect on their role and contribution to the
process of writing.
• 3. emphasizes the development of students' decision-making abilities
• 4. Learners get involved in the process and are encouraged to take part
ownership of this process.
Disadvantages of Self-Correction Technique
• Self-ccorrection technique has some disadvantages. They are:
• 1. Additional briefing time can increase a teacher’s workload.
• 2. The validity and reliability are low.
• 3. Students feel ill-equipped to undertake the Self-Correction
technique.
• 4. Students may be reluctant to make judgments regarding their own
work.
The Procedures of Self-Correction
Technique
• Bitchener, Young, and Cameron (2005) mention some steps of self-
correction technique as follow:
• 1. Teacher gives instruction to each student to read their writing individually.
• 2. Teacher asks students observe their own writing.
• 3. After observing, teacher asks students to check their writing, students
begin to aware about something weird about their writing.
• 4. Teacher gives encouragement and asks students to check whether there is
any mistake in their writing.
• 5. Teacher asks students to correct their mistakes.
• 6. The teacher re-check the correction made by the students.
Peer–Correction Technique

• Peer-correction technique is a technique in which learners receive

feedback on their
• writing from each other.
• It can be done in pairs or in a small group (Nation,2008).
• It is is a type of instructional activity in which students collaborate in a
group setting.
• Peer-correction technique is a technique where the students correct
• their drafts in pairs.
• Each pair checks the draft and correct the mistakes based on what they
have known.
The Advantages of Peer-Correction Technique

• 1. Learners prefer peer feedback for they think that peers can provide more ideas
and locate problems they have missed.
• 2. When students are treated with peer-correction technique, their accuracy in
writing
• descriptive paragraphs improves.
• 3. Peer-correction technique can help students to give and get criticism on their
writing from their classmates as part of this corrective strategy. It can be used in
the classroom to help students improve their performance autonomy,
cooperation, interaction, and involvement (Sultana, 2009).
• 4. Through peer-correction technique, students are involved in the process of
correction as much as possible because in this way they can learn from each
other and gain more autonomy.
The Advantages of Peer-Correction Technique cont…

• 5. Peer-correction technique is chosen as a part of a large category of learning activities

requiring students to work together in a group. Peers contribute in terms of preparing
themselves to write without the help of the instructor during the process of their writing.
Moreover, since they work in pairs, they learn to face risks in completing the writing
assignment (Jacobs, 1989).
• 6. Peer correction also provides a significantly positive influence on students' idea
construction in
writing that can increase their writing competency (Harmer, 2004).
• 8. Peer-correction technique also provides the pair an opportunity to learn within a
supportive community in order to feel safe enough to take risks.
• 9. Learning responsibility is shared with learners which shows them that their
opinion is valued; and for the teacher, it saves time and effort.
Disadvantages of Peer-Correction
Technique
• Aside from the benefits of adopting peer-correction technique in
writing instruction. When a teacher employs this technique, there are
several difficulties. The followings are some of the drawbacks of peer
correction (Sultana, 2009):
• 1) Some students may be hesitant to address their classmates' mistakes
because doing so would risk their friendship
• 2) If the learner lacks correcting skills, it may be slower and less
effective
The Procedures of Peer-Correction
Technique cont…
• Technically, there are some steps of doing peer-correction;
• 1. Teacher asks students to select the topic
• 2. Teacher introduces preparation of writing
• 3. Teacher provides the checklist guideline
• 4. Teacher divides the students into pairs or small groups
• 5. Teacher ask students to exchange their first draft with their partner
• 6. Teacher asks students read and assess their friend’s writing based on
the guideline (Raimes,1983).
ERROR ANALYSIS
The Definition of Error Analysis
• Several definitions of error analysis are available.
• Richards (1971: 12) said that EA is a field that deals with the contrasts
between how people learning a language speak and how native
speakers use the language.
• According to Ubol (1988: 8), error analysis is a methodical description
and explanation of errors made by learners or users in their oral or
writing work on the TL.
• It means that error analysis is involved with the clarifying of the
occurrence error and the production of their oral or written
expression distinguishes from that of native speaker or TL standard.
Error Analysis Cont…
• Error analysis is a type of linguistic analysis that emphasis on the
errors learners committed and it analyzes the errors made by L2
learners.
• Richards and Schmidt (2002:184) Error analysis as the study of
analyzing the errors committed by EFL learners.
• Again Crystal defined error analysis as employing any of the concepts
and processes provided by linguistics to discover, classify, and
systematically interpret the inappropriate forms produced by
someone learning a foreign language. (2003:165).
The Uses of Error Analysis
• The use of the EA is to recommended appropriate and efficient teaching-
learning strategies and remedial measures to be taken in the context second
language learning.
• This process is a multidimensional involving much more than just analysing
the errors of learners.
• the study of error analysis is one of the most valuable methods based on the
errors committed by learners in their written or spoken discourse.
• After examining these errors, teachers have a better understanding of the
learners’ linguistic weaknesses.
• It also help instructors, syllabus designers, and textbook writers to address
the problems in the future.
The Uses of Error Analysis
• Error analysis (EA) is productive because it allows an insight into the
language learning process of learner and a gauge to show how far the
learner has progressed.
• It also measures how much the learner has yet to learn;
The Uses of Error Analysis cont…
• Error analysis involves identifying, classifying, and analyzing errors
made by students.
• Teachers can use the findings of error analysis to improve their
teaching.
• It helps teachers understand students
• Error analysis helps teachers understand how students learn a
language, and what strategies they use. It also helps teachers identify
common difficulties students face.
• It helps teachers improve teaching
The Uses of Error Analysis cont…
• Error analysis helps teachers identify areas where students need more
help, and how to correct errors in the classroom.
• It also helps teachers prepare teaching materials.
• Helps students learn
• Error analysis helps students learn by showing them where they need to
improve their language skills.
• It also helps students understand that making errors is a natural part of
learning.
• Helps researchers
• Error analysis provides researchers with evidence on how language is
acquired.
THE END