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CHATGPT AND CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK:
RESHAPING LANGUAGE LEARNING
Ali H. Al-Hoorie
Saudi TESOL Association
Presented at the 3rd Teaching English Writing in Higher Education Forum
11 November 2023
LET’S START WITH A JOKE…
•Parent: What is my daughter still making mistakes with 3rd person singular –s?
•Teacher: But I have told her about the rule!
“At the recent TESOL
Convention [1998] in Seattle,
several major colloquium
papers either supported or
offered rebuttals to Truscott’s
arguments” (Ferris, 1999, p. 1)
POINTS BY TRUSCOTT
•When told not to write something that sounds right to them, or to write something that does not
sound right to them, students do not eagerly throw away their intuitions and do things the
teacher's way.
•Many students go on writing as they did before the correction or simply avoid using
constructions in which the problem could arise.
•Thus, the advice that does not accord with the student's intuition so not likely to be followed, at
least not in the long term.
•Research found correction had little or no effect on students' writing ability. It made no
difference who the students were, how many mistakes were corrected, which mistakes were
corrected, how detailed the comments were, or in what form they were presented. The
corrections had no effect [for L1].
•Follow-up testing and observation showed that knowledge which students had apparently
acquired actually disappeared in a matter of months.
POINTS BY TRUSCOTT
•OK, but why harmful?
•Students: Inherent unpleasantness of grammar correction
•Teachers: Burden in marking & giving grammar feedback
•Class: Absorbs time and energy in writing class
•Eventually: Harms the complexity of students’ writing
POINTS BY TRUSCOTT
•Based on a simplistic view of learning as essential the transfer of information from teacher to
student.
•The acquisition of a grammatical structure is a gradual process, not a sudden discovery as an
intuitive view of correction would imply.
•This is about grammar correction, not the content, organization, or clarity of a composition.
•Some research showed that content-oriented feedback is superior.
POINTS BY TRUSCOTT
•Apparently positive!
META-ANALYSIS
•Not that positive!
TRUSCOTT’S RESPONSE
•Research & meta-analyses still being conducted
•“A mass of reports—good, bad, and indifferent—are fed into the computer in the hope that
people will cease caring about the quality of the material on which the conclusions are
based” (Eysenck, 1978, p. 517)
•Good to be skeptical than credulous
JURY STILL OUT
POSSIBLE THEORETICAL EXPLANATION
Krashen (1977) at TESOL
Convention, Miami
Ortega (2009)
(ROUGH) ORDER OF ACQUISITION
1. Present Progressive –ing: “He is running”
2. Plural –s: “cats, dogs”
3. Prepositions: “in, on, under”
4. Regular Past –ed: “She played”
5. Irregular Past Tense: “went, ate”
6. Third Person Singular –s: “She runs”
7. Articles: “a, an, the”
8. Possessive –‘s: “John’s book”
9. Auxiliary “be” for Progressive Aspect: “They were playing”
10. Auxiliary “have” for Perfect Aspect: “She has eaten”
11. Modal Auxiliary Verbs: “would, should, could”
Age
L1 background
L2 exposure
Learning rates vary
Nonlinear
Fluctuations, lapses
Not unidirectional
•Parent: What is my daughter still making mistakes with 3rd person singular –s?
•Teacher: But I have told her the rule!
Not simple transfer
Not Practice
Not laziness
Maybe not ready
WHERE DOES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FIT HERE?
BEST BET
•Feedback should be
•Individualized
•Suitable for learner’s level
LET’S HAVE A DEMONSTRATION
•Several false positives
•Change not always clear
•Even for an advanced L2 user
EXAMPLE TEXT
Yesterday, I meet my friend at a park. She bring her dog, a big, brown one, and we
played together. Her dog run really fast, but I run faster. We also played with a frisbee,
and her dog catch it every time. I think that was a fun day. Then, we decide to go to a ice
cream shop. I like the chocolate ice cream, but she likes vanilla. We enjoyed our ice
creams, and after that, we go to a library to return John book, but I forgot my book at
home. John's book was really interesting, I think he's a good writer. So, I borrow a book
from the library, a book about adventures.
•Very different types of mistakes
•Overwhelming
•Mistake not always clear
•Such as word removal
•Sweep bolding
•Not user- (learner-) friendly
CHATGPT FEEDBACK
•Focus on one type of error
•Suitable to learner’s level
EMPIRICAL RESEARCH NEEDED
•Does this tool help learners?
•Long-term effect?
•Best implementation strategies? Problems?
REFERENCES
Eysenck, H. J. (1978). An exercise in mega-silliness. American Psychologist, 33(5), 517. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-
066X.33.5.517.a
Ferris, D. (1999). The case for grammar correction in L2 writing classes: A response to Truscott (1996). Journal of second
language writing, 8(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1060-3743(99)80110-6
Kang, E., & Han, Z. (2015). The efficacy of written corrective feedback in improving L2 written accuracy: A
meta‐analysis. The modern language journal, 99(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12189
Krashen, S. (1977). Some issues relating to the Monitor Model. In H. D. Brown, C. A. Yorio, & R. H. Crymes (Eds.), On
TESOL ‘77: Teaching and learning English as a second language: Trends in research and practice (pp. 144–58).
TESOL.
Ortega, L. (2009). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.
Truscott, J. (2020). The efficacy of written corrective feedback: A critique of a meta-analysis. Unpublished manuscript,
National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
THANK YOU!
@Ali_AlHoorie
hoorie_ali@hotmail.com
www.ali-alhoorie.com
