Selective Corrective Feedback

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TESL 0110
Unit 3 Reflection
Teachers should be selective when correcting students' mistakes. This appears to be a topic that is hotly debated. According to Scott Thornbury's true or false quiz on myths and misconceptions about corrective feedback, this statemement is false. I  completely disagreed with Thornbury's answer to this question. I don't think it is beneficial to a student's learning or self-esteem to point out every single mistake that they make, in any skill area. If a student has many errors and they are all identified, it may be overwhelming and the student may not be able to process the amount of information they are being told. As a result, they are not likely to learn from those mistakes or correct them in future speaking or writing tasks. In addition, pointing out all of a student's errors can have a negative effect on their self-worth. It can crush their self-confidence and cause them to not want to do further tasks. It may also result in them only using structures that they are familiar with and not wanting to take risks, which is an important part of learning. The point of corrective feedback is for students to learn from their mistake, internalize the information, and transfer that learning to future tasks so that they do not repeat the same mistakes over and over again. It is a learning process.
It is interesting that there isn't a definitive answer and that research shows conflicting views on the selectivity of corrective feedback in writing.  In the written feedback techniques section in Mistakes and feedback by Harmer, he talks about focusing, which is when we "restrict feedback to a particular aspect of language." This method allows students to concentrate their attention on specific written features. In A Typology of written corrective feedback, Ellis states that focused corrective feedback "may prove more effective as the learner is able to examine multiple corrections of a single error and thus obtain the rich evidence they need to both understand why what they wrote was erroneous and to acquire the correct form." (p.102) Our professor, Ana, shared a summary on the topic from Alister Cumming, professor emeritus at OISE. (A. Bartosik, personal communication, November 20, 2018). According to Cumming, to be effective, error correction should be selective and focused on a few specific items that were taught. I am in complete agreement.
I think being selective with corrective feedback is ideal, and I have often done so in elementary and middle school classrooms in my past professional experience. Identifying a specific writing feature, and letting the students know that is what you will be focusing on, will result in students focusing their attention on that aspect of their writing. Then when they receive their corrective feedback they can see what they need to work on within that particular written feature. In the next writing piece I can focus on something else, unless of course the students need additional practice with that writing feature. In my opinion and from my experience, selective corrective feedback is necessary for learning and transfer to occur.
References:

Ellis, R. (April, 2009). A typology of written corrective feedback. ELT Journal, V63, n2.
Harmer, J. (2001). Chapter 7: Mistakes and feedback . In Harmer, J. (Eds.), The practice of English language teaching (pp. 99-104 & 109-113). Essex, England: Longman.

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