Yvette Coyle and Julio Roca de Larios Coyle, Yvette, and Julio Roca de Larios. "EXPLORING THE ROLE PLAYED BY ERROR CORRECTION AND MODELS ON CHILDREN?S REPORTED NOTICING AND OUTPUT PRODUCTION IN A L2 WRITING TASK." Studies in Second Language Acquisition (2013): 1-35.

 Theoretically, feedback on language errors has been linked to processes of noticing and attention to form  Feedback provided on output production is thought to foster these processes in different ways  A considerable number of studies have been conducted, but with conflicting evidence

 CF – Corrective Feedback  Given by a teacher or from a model text  Can lack consistency and clarity  EC – Error Correction  EFL – English as a Foreign Language  LRE – Language Related Episode  PFN – Problematic Feature Noted  FN – Feature Noted

 Preclauses – grammatically incorrect units of language consisting of fragmented or distorted strings of words, at times incomplete, in which the meaning is not always apparent  The mother sbeken ___ the _____  And modher and sister walking a broder  Protoclauses – linguistic units in which the children’s meaning intention is clear but that contain grammatical inaccuracies or have gaps in the causal unit  The baby paint and pink the wall  The mother and sister’s is painting in the table  Clauses refer to grammatically accurate units of language; these may present slight inaccuracies in spelling, lexis, grammar, or concordance  The girls and the boys are paintying  The two girls is painting flowers

1. What features of language do child EFL learners of different proficiency levels notice spontaneously when composing a narrative text? 2. What do children of different proficiency levels notice when comparing their written texts with either EC provided by the teacher or model texts? 3. How is the children’s reported noticing at the composition and comparison stages related to their revised texts? To what extent is this relationship related to their proficiency levels? 4. What differences in terms of linguistic acceptability and comprehensibility can be observed in the written output of children in each feedback condition and as a function of their different proficiency levels.

 23 child pairs – 26 boys and 20 girls  Aged years old  2 EFL classrooms  Southeast Spain  Learning English for 4 or 5 years  Received an average of 3 hours of instruction per week  Proficiency matched pairs – based on performance on English tests administered at regular intervals throughout the year  7 high, 9 medium, 7 low  12 male, 9 female, 2 mixed gender  Discarded data of 3 pairs due to absences during Stage 2 or 3

 Teacher delivered the intervention to ensure that classroom conditions remained as natural as possible  Delivered over 4 weeks in 3 different stages

 Four-frame picture prompt was given to each pair, who were asked to jointly compose their text, noting down any linguistic difficulties they experienced while doing so

 1 week later  Half of the pairs received their original stories with the teacher’s EC and the remaining pairs were given two model texts (one written by the researcher and one written by the teacher)  EC group: 3 high proficiency pairs, 5 medium proficiency pairs, 1 low proficiency pair  Modeling condition: 4 high proficiency pairs, 3 medium proficiency pairs, 4 low proficiency pairs  Pairs identified and noted any differences they observed between their story and the teacher’s corrections or the model texts

 1 week later  Pairs were again given the picture prompt and asked to rewrite the story

 Learners’ attention at this stage was focused primarily on finding the words to express their intended meanings  91% of PFN’s were lexical  4% of PFN’s were difficulty in spelling  5% of PFN’s were expressing ideas

 Learners in the EC group noticed grammatical errors related mainly to the correct formation of verb tenses, morphological features such as: subject-verb agreement, plural nouns, or the use of prepositions  Learners in the model condition produced misinterpretations of the language, which differed in certain ways according to proficiency  In general, the quantitative distribution of the features noticed by the children in both feedback conditions at the comparison stage was fairly evenly spread across proficiency levels

 Learners in the EC condition incorporated significantly more grammatical features noticed at the comparison stage than learners in the model condition  Learners in the model condition incorporated significantly more lexical items in the revised texts that were previously unreported  The proficiency counts confirm an almost exclusive focus by the pairs of all proficiency levels on lexis

 Significant differences across proficiency levels in the number of preclauses produced both in the original texts and in the revised versions  The low-proficiency pairs showed more units of this type in both conditions  Significant differences across proficiency levels in the number of clauses produced in the revised texts  Both medium and high proficiency pairs showed more units of this type  Low proficiency pairs failed to produce a single correct clause  Medium and high proficiency levels significantly improved the production of clauses in their revised texts compared to their original texts  The EC condition produced a significantly higher number of clauses in the revised texts

 Writing tasks provided children of all ability levels with opportunities for self-initiated noticing  Mainly lexical driven  Learners’ attention to language mediated differently by different types of CF, with EC fostering increased noticing of grammatical errors and models directing attention toward lexis and language chunks  Learners’ textual revisions were mostly lexical  EC encouraged more grammatical revisions than models  EC condition led to the production of more acceptable and comprehensible output

 Children can and do notice gaps in their linguistic knowledge during the production of written output  EC is advantageous to students both in L2 and FL contexts  Majority of this noticing is lexically driven  These findings contradict other research (Garcia 2011)  Earlier research only investigated 2 learners  Data collection was verbalizations of pairs and individuals instead of note-taking

 Does EC always guarantee the type of quality noticing that may be needed to foster language learning?  Need research that specifically isolates perceptual saliency as an independent variable  This data suggests the existence of a threshold beyond which these less proficient learners might begin to move away from lexis and to diversify their linguistic concerns – but needs further study

 The claims are supported by the data in this article  All learners improved  The EC condition was given more direct feedback  Was the model condition given any direct instruction on the model texts? How would text written at their proficiency level changed the results?  Incorporation of other data collection technique with note-taking

 All learners can benefit from the same feedback techniques  EC is advantageous to all students  Incorporating multiple interventions with all students would be beneficial  Building a bridge between SLA and L2 writing communities  Speaking proficiency vs. Writing proficiency