lt is often a delicate decision as to how to provide learners with feedback on their errors when their attention is primarily focused on the content of what they are saying, rather than on the way they are saying it. Interrupting learners ‘in full flight’ to give them corrections seems to run counter to the need to let them experience autonomy. If the teacher is constantly intervening to assist their performance, whether by providing unknown words or correcting their errors, they can hardly be said to be self-regulating. And it may have the counterproductive effect of inhibiting fluency by forcing learners’ attention on to accuracy. Nevertheless, many teachers feel uncomfortable about ‘letting errors go’, even in fluency activities, and there is support for the view that maintaining a focus on form – that is, on formal accuracy – is good for learners in the long run. lt is important, therefore, that such a focus should be effected at minimal cost to the speaker’s sense of being in control. What is agreed is that in cases of correction of oral fluency, the teacher’s corrections, while explicit, are unobtrusive, and these are picked up by the learners with no real loss of fluency: ln the above extract, the teacher's interventions should be economical and effective, and the conversational flow should not threatened. However, it could be argued that such overt monitoring deprives the learners of opportunities to take more responsibility for their own monitoring and selfrepair. This is especially the case with regard to their mistakes, as opposed to their errors. By mistake is meant the learners’ momentary failure to apply what they already know, due mainly to the demands of online processing. An error, on the other hand, represents a gap in the speaker’s knowledge of the system. Mistakes can usually be self-corrected, but errors cannot. A deft hint to the learner that they have used a present verb form instead of a past one, for example, may be all that is needed to encourage selfcorrection. And self-correction, even if prompted by the teacher, is one step nearer self-regulation and the ultimate goal of full autonomy. Sometimes, however, the learner’s message is simply unintelligible, and some kind of more obtrusive intervention is necessary to repair the breakdown. ln this case, an intervention that is perceived by the learner as repair is likely to be less inhibiting than one that is perceived of as correction. Repair is facilitative, while correction can be construed negatively, as judgmental. In repairing, the teacher's intervention takes the form of a conversational repair, one that is consistent with the meaning-orientation of the interaction
THORNBURY, Scott. How to Teach Speaking. Cambridge: Longman, 2005, pp. 91-2. (Adapted).
One of the main problems when dealing with oral fluency is to know if a student should be corrected when interacting or after it. After reading this passage about feedback and correction in fluency, select the alternative that agrees with the point of view discussed in the passage.