In second language acquisition, the term Error treatment refers to the way the teachers and/or instructors respond to a learner's linguistic error made in course of his/her learning a second language. Much of error treatment studies seeks to address issues like when, how, and by whom such errors should be corrected.
Contents
Types
Craig Chaudron (1977) has pointed out four types of treatment:
Terminologies
A number of terms are used to discuss the various areas of error treatment, though the differences among these terms are very subtle.
Feedback
It has characteristics of constructive criticism which may be positive or negative usually from a more informed source.
Correction
In correcting errors, correction is a post-production exercise and basically deals with the linguistic errors. Often in the form of feedback, it draws learners' attention to the mistakes they have made and acts as a reminder of the correct form of language.
Repair
Errors that cause "communication difficulties" are likely to be "repaired" either by speaker or listener. The term repair, which includes correction, is an attempt to identify and correct the communication difficulties.
Role of teachers and learners
The role of teachers and that of learners in correcting errors are of great importance. This tries to answer the question as to who should indicate and fix the error. The phenomenon is known as "self" and "other". Depending on who indicates and fixes the error either in conversation or in classroom, there can be four possible ways of error correction:
According to Van Lier (1988), in naturally occurring conversation, self-initiated and self-completed repair occurs while in teacher-dominated classroom, other-initiated and other-completed repair can be sought for.
Description
Much of the studies on error treatment has focused on the following three issues: