The 'Fine Line' of Student Interaction

What can teachers do to 'discourage interaction'?

Teachers walk a fine line when creating a classroom that fosters interaction. It only takes a few simple errors for an instructor to 'discourage interaction.' Firstly, in regards to error correction, Brown & Lee advise that their must be an optimal balance between positive and negative cognitive feedback in order to be effective. Too much negative feedback will lead to a learner shutting themselves off from communication while too much positive feedback can lead to the "fossilization" of certain errors and develop bad habits. (2015) For example, if a student continues to drop the 's' when reading out loud at the ends of words and the instructor decides it is more worthwhile to correct other pronunciation errors, this could lead to the student continuously dropping 's''s and causing later confusion in their speaking. 

Another example of the fine line that teachers walk when it comes to interaction is Skinner's operant conditioning model of learning. The cognitive and intuitive modes of feedback and correction are reinforcers to speakers' responses. With positive reinforcement, learners can internalize the corrected speech patterns. However, ignoring mistakes that students have made is also considered the effect of a positive reinforcer, so it reiterates my point that teachers have to be very careful in this regard as they may be encouraging interaction but they also may be encouraging erroneous behaviour. (Brown & Lee, 2015) 

Interaction in the classroom, specifically for listening and speaking since they are the most widely used skills for interaction, is a tough balance to obtain for instructors. Teachers must do their best to determine if their deviant utterance should be treated or ignored without discouraging the interaction of that learner. I found that Brown & Lee's "model for treatment of classroom speech errors," (p. 293, 2015) is incredibly useful and I encourage all of my classmates to take a look at it. 

References

Brown, D. & Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy (4th ed. revised). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education.