Errors are evidence of an interlanguage system, not only failures. Respond according to their source (transfer / developmental / teaching-induced) and whether they impede communication.
Where the sources disagree
- Transfer vs developmental: Thornbury doubts that most errors are L1 interference. Teachers in single-L1 classes (Jaworski) see transfer everywhere.
- Written CF: contested (Truscott vs Ferris). See ELT Research Bites - reading queue.
- Synthesis across sources (Claude): Lyster & Ranta (1997) found recasts rarely produce uptake, while prompts (elicitation, metalinguistic cues) do. Tsateri says connect first, correct later (on intuition). Ellis & Shintani (via Fluency First) say both immediate and delayed correction can help. The best-supported principle is to be selective (few, global, developmental errors) and noticeable, more than any rule about timing.
- In-flow vs delayed: Underhill (Demand High) upgrades language during fluency work with silent cues; commenters and the delayed-feedback tradition say interrupting fluency harms it, especially with anxious learners.
- Prevention vs correction: Dellar: “prevention is infinitely desirable to cure” (design tasks within learners’ priming). Pinard: a structured response sequence with explicit, varied techniques. These are complementary: Dellar is about planning, Pinard about the moment.
Notes
- Errors are often developmental, not L1 transfer
- Focus on form vs focus on formS
- The 5 Rs of reactive teaching
- Teach grammar in processability order (Pienemann)
More notes (by source)
After Octopus (Vedrana Vojkovic Estatiev)
- Written correction is a workload and uptake problem
Clare’s ELT Compendium (Clare Maas) - Check your feedback language against learners’ level
Demand High ELT - One-to-one-in-a-group - stop rubberstamping answers
- Upgrade language during fluency work with minimal interference
EFL Magazine - Agree how mistakes will be treated before correcting
ELT Planning (Pete) - Lyster and Ranta’s six corrective feedback moves and learner uptake
ELT-CATION (Svetlana Kandybovich) - Turn writing feedback into a learning activity
Fluency First ELT (Anderson & McCutcheon) - Reactive focus on form - choose few, global, developmental errors
Hana Tichá (How I see it now) - Culture-loaded English - correct only errors that cause misunderstanding
Hugh Dellar - Most errors are priming gaps, not grammar gaps
- Round-ups, gapped boardwork and reformulation
Leo Selivan (Leoxicon) - Colligation and bottom-up grammar
Lizzie Pinard - Error correction - types of error and a response sequence
The TEFL Zone (Rachel Tsateri) - Connect first, correct later
Key terms (DELTA M1)
error vs mistake (Corder) · global vs local error · contrastive analysis · error analysis · interlanguage · fossilisation / stabilisation · overgeneralisation · CLI · recast · elicitation · metalinguistic feedback · clarification request (Lyster & Ranta 1997 typology)