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The Role of Noticing and Self- Reformulation in Feedback on Writing

By Grant Hartley

Abstract

This paper describes an investigation into an approach to feedback on

writing involving students first in noticing features of the target

language which differ to their inter-language, and then trying to use

these features in their writing. It further describes an alternative way

of viewing the value of feedback on writing, and the role a systemic

functional view of language can play in how feedback is carried out.

This investigation focuses on the possibilities and constraints of this

approach to feedback, and concludes that noticing how more

proficient users word their meanings and adjusting their own output is

dependent on students’ existing inter-language and the type of

language to be reformulated, specifically in terms of certain types of

grammatical metaphor.

Introduction

“Learning is not the taking in of linguistic forms by learners, but the

constant adaptation of their linguistic resources in the service of

meaning making.” (Larsen- Freeman & Cameron, 2008, p. 135)

The above quote comes from a discussion regarding the language development

process viewed from a Complex Systems perspective, emphasizing ‘emergence’ of

new forms, brought about through the provision of opportunities or ‘affordances’ (van

Lier, 2004). This approach to language learning assumes a non-linear language

development process, characterized by iterative as opposed to additive processes. In

terms of inter- language development, what this suggests is that the wording an

individual may use is reflective of the experience that individual may or may not have

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with the lexical item in question. This wording may or may not carry a quality of

‘naturalness’ about it, however, what Hoey (2005) proposes is that with enough

experience with and of the target language, a user develops a system whereby one

lexical item may experience a “drift in the priming” (ibid: p.9) towards more natural

language use or specific uses of words within certain areas of discourse.

This paper investigates how this view of language development might inform how

feedback on written output is carried out. As a way of situating the method of written

corrective feedback in this paper, it will start by reviewing work done in the field of

corrective feedback more generally, and attempt to connect similar work done from a

systemic functional view of language. It will then outline why it is felt a systemic

functional view of language could serve the aims of corrective feedback. Finally, it

will discuss the implementation of this method of written corrective feedback with a

class of first year academic reading and writing students, with a view to gaining

insights into the learning process.

Literature overview

Corrective feedback

The idea of corrective feedback is intimately bound up with the concepts of

language knowledge and language learning. Ellis (1994) highlights a useful

distinction between implicit and explicit learning and implicit and explicit knowledge,

which raises questions surrounding the usefulness of corrective feedback for students’

language development. In an attempt to clarify the different options available when

doing corrective feedback, Ellis (2009) identifies different types involving the

activating of implicit and explicit learning and knowledge.

The method of corrective feedback under investigation in this paper requires

students to reword their meanings using a key word provided by the teacher. This key

word, or clue, reflects how a more proficient speaker might have worded the meaning

which the student attempted to construct. In this way it could be said that the student

is required to reformulate their own meanings, using the ‘clue’ provided by a more

proficient user of the language, the teacher. This process requires students to research

the word, building up an awareness of how it is used in a sentence, and then select

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from the different uses the particular instance that would be most useful in wording

the original meaning the student was trying to convey.

As such, this type of feedback can be viewed as falling somewhere between

direct and indirect feedback (Ellis, 2009). Direct in the sense that the teacher is

providing a restriction, in that the student is directed towards the wording using the

key word and resources at their disposal. Indirect in that the student needs to explore

the key word themselves, and then make a decision on how they can use it to convey

their meaning. Ellis et al (2007) point to work done by Lyster and Sheen regarding

direct corrective feedback, highlighting the usefulness of explicit recasts in spoken

language over more implicit recasts, because the difference between what they said

and the recast are clearer. The process described in this paper highlights the role of

noticing. First in terms of students noticing how the word is used, and then applying

one of those uses to the meaning they are trying to convey.

The method under investigation here can also be referred to as a focused form

of corrective feedback. Sachs and Polio (2007) support the use of more focused direct

feedback stating that learners appear more able to correct the mistake as they do not

have to spend as much cognitive energy on finding the differences between their

utterances and the reformulated versions. Schmidt (2006) agrees with this when he

states that “recasts can only work for acquisition if learners notice the changes that

have been made to their own utterances, and there are reasons to believe that they do

not always do so.” (p. 341) It is felt the method of corrective feedback under

investigation here, could provide students with a clue to the rewording of their

meanings, therefore facilitating the noticing of differences in wording between their

original wording and a more proficient version.

The usefulness of focused feedback in writing has been well documented with

opposing viewpoints emerging (see Truscott, 2007 and Bitchener & Knoch, 2009).

This discussion has revolved around the students’ ability or inability, when pointed

towards errors, to change student output to more acceptable forms. Truscott

concludes, based on an analysis of 6 controlled and 6 uncontrolled experiments, that

“correction most likely has small harmful effects on students’ ability to write

accurately and that we can be reasonably confident that if it does have any genuine

benefits, they are so small as to be uninteresting.” (Truscott, 2007, p. 256). Ellis

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(2006), however, disagrees pointing to 7 studies showing evidence that focused

corrective feedback is of use concluding that:

“overall, the results point to an advantage for explicit over implicit

corrective feedback in studies in which the treatment involved

production.” (ibid: 349)

While Truscott (2007) does acknowledge the value of feedback on students’

writing, what he appears to raise a question over is the value of written feedback

focusing on grammatical errors, and whether or not this enhances the ability of

learners to write accurately. Presumably, the reason for this is his reservation

regarding the process of noticing language (Truscott, 1998). Truscott concludes in a

review on the role of noticing in SLA, that much work needs to be done in order to

understand this role. Distinguishing between noticing and competence, Truscott

(1998, p. 124) has the following to say. “(T)he acquisition of metalinguistic

knowledge is tied to (conscious) noticing; the development of competence is not.” For

Truscott then, noticing involves identifying those aspects of co-text, the lexico-

grammatical features surrounding an item, which doesn’t translate necessarily to

understanding how these features create meaning. Truscott’s reservations regarding a

focus on grammatical errors are shared by Mahboob and Devrim (2013) as they argue

for an approach that “goes beyond the notion of ‘correction’ and explores how

feedback can work to support and scaffold student learning.” (p. 102). Mahboob and

Devrim are thus arguing that feedback needs to fulfill a wider role, encapsulating not

just a narrow focus on syntax, but one that covers register, embodied in the field,

mode and tenor, as well.

Perhaps a simple example will illustrate this. For a student to notice that a

lexical item such as ‘seem’ is followed by ‘to’, does not mean they understand the

reason, in this case a use of ‘to’ in the perfective aspect to achieve a less real/ certain

feel and thus achieving the function of hedging. Schmidt (1990) in his discussion on

consciousness would agree, arguing that noticing is not enough. However, he argues

that once the first step of noticing has occurred, opportunities for reflection and

comparisons with existing knowledge can lead to understanding of how language is

used. In a report on different forms of feedback on writing within a tertiary education

context, Mahboob and Devrim (2013) outline a topology of feedback techniques

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which address this issue of reflection on language use through providing a rationale

for the ‘errors’ to the student. It could be argued that providing a rationale with the

feedback could go some way in providing affordances for students to reflect and

compare with existing knowledge which may lead to deeper understandings of how

the language is used.

Application of form/ function to feedback

Adopting a systemic functional approach to describing language would

presumably have implications for the way language is dealt with in class. While it

would still be possible to raise awareness of language and respond to student output in

a more traditional form based way, an approach to language informed by a systemic

functional approach in the classroom would afford students the opportunity to

investigate the relationship between “particular context of situation- a “situation type”

(Wells, 1999) and the register as embodied in the Field, Tenor and Mode, thereby

making the connection between meaning and form. Martin (2013) points to the

importance of focusing on register, as a way of accounting for the differences between

more abstract, academic writing as exemplified in vertical discourse and more

concrete forms of writing found in horizontal discourse. In particular, Martin

highlights the role grammatical metaphor plays “in the texture of vertical discourse,

enabling as it does the construal of uncommon sense knowledge.” (Martin, 2013: p.

18).

It is probably true to say that a significant amount of corrective feedback

doesn’t really target register, taking the form of highlighting errors and then getting

students to produce a correct version of the mistake. Students can be guided in this

endeavor with help in identifying what type of mistake it is, thereby giving them a

clue as to the nature of the error. However, personal experience shows that this

method of error correction has limitations which are briefly outline below.

Anecdotal evidence from colleagues as well as Truscott’s (2007) discussion

suggests that reservations regarding the limitations of this type of error correction are

well founded. In other words highlighting a particular student’s error this week

doesn’t mean that this same error will be absent from written work submitted a week

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later. Nor should it be, for if that was the expectation then we would be subscribing to

the idea of language learning being a linear process, devoid of the regressions,

backsliding and so on that is well documented in the literature (Larsen-Freeman &

Cameron, 2008). Mahboob & Devrim (2013) would appear to agree arguing for a

broader focus on research into feedback, focusing on “students’ use of language

across a range of strata and not just at morpho-syntactic issues.” (p.102).

This then brings into question the role of feedback on students’ writing.

Instead of merely pointing students to ‘discrepancies’ in the inter-language, perhaps

there is another role that feedback on writing can play. To explore this question, this

discussion will turn to what kind of language could to be focused on and how register

can be targeted through feedback on writing.

Hallidayian Systemic Functional Grammar emphasizes the relationships

between what we say and how we say it. Put another way the functions with which

language is put to use, are directly related to the way we say things (form). For

instance, in Halliday’s discussion on ‘Function and Use’ (2009) he condenses the

seven uses or functions that early childhood language exhibits into what he terms

Meta-Functions in adult language, namely, the ideational, interpersonal and textual

meta-functions.

Jones’s discussion (1989) on the relevance of Systemic Functional Grammar

to TESOL within an academic writing program is a useful example of the role

Systemic Functional Grammar can play in highlighting what students need to become

aware of about the target language, in order to become more proficient users of the

language. Jones points to the three aspects of register, namely; field, tenor and mode,

representing the Hallidayian ideational, interpersonal and textual meta-functions.

Field refers to the knowledge area or topic the discourse is taking place

around. In order to effectively engage in academic writing students need to be able to

employ lexis, ranging from topic specific terms to terms which are general in nature,

appearing in discourse over a wide variety of topic areas. Jones in her discussion on

effective academic writing also points to the prevalence of specific types of process

within different genres, representing processes of doing, meaning and being. When a

choice is made in terms of creating meaning through one of these processes, certain

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grammatical options present themselves in terms of participants and circumstantial

aspects of the clause. For example, effective users of the language can produce

clauses reporting arguments representing mental processes, including one human like

participant “endowed with consciousness” (Halliday, 1994, p. 114) together with what

is being sensed, either represented as a fact or metaphenomenon. However, even if a

producer of language can make use of these, they still need to comply with

expectations relating to how meanings are conveyed which represent something of the

cultural or social aspect of the communication.

In terms of Tenor, Jones (ibid.) points to features of text that represent the

relationship between the participants in the discourse. Within an academic writing

environment she notes the use of passives, as a way of avoiding personal closeness

between the reader and writer, and the prevalence of modal adjuncts, such as, ‘It is

thought that …’, which themselves represent the mental processes inherent in this

type of discourse.

Added to Field and Tenor is the third broad area of register, what is referred to

as Mode. This acknowledges the fact that because written and spoken forms of

interaction take place within certain cultures and between particular participants

within those cultures; they exhibit important differences in form which reflect this

relationship. An example of this is the use of grammatical metaphor, the linguistic

phenomenon realized when “(a) meaning that was originally construed by one kind of

wording comes instead to be construed by another.” (Halliday, 2003). Halliday

provides a taxonomy of grammatical metaphor pointing to 13 different types, all

involving rewording meanings where the meaning shifts between semantic elements.

The second type he refers to, and one which was most evident in this study involves

the shift in meaning from a process to an entity, realized through a shift in

grammatical function in this case from event to thing. For example, a sentence such

as,

“We tried to go to Dubai at the weekend but we couldn’t due to the weather.

might be reworded as,

“Our attempts to visit Dubai were thwarted by the weather.”

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In this instance the meaning of ‘tried’ is reworded and presented in a different

grammatical class, a noun phrase. As this example illustrates this shift in wording

affects the register with the second sentence sounding more like something we might

read in a more formal type of report, as opposed to the first which sounds more like

spoken language.

Whereas in spoken discourse this is not so prevalent, with information being

spread across clauses, presumably because meanings conveyed aurally in real time in

a more dense form would present certain challenges to the listener’s understandings.

The question of what role Systemic Functional Grammar could play in error

correction and students’ writing now presents itself. A useful way of approaching this

question is through Vygotsky’s notion of the Zone of Proximal Development, defined

by Wells (p:25) as “a potential for his or her intra-mental development that is created

by the inter-mental interaction that occurs as the learner and other people cooperate in

some activity.” The key word in this quote is ‘potential’. This indicates not what is,

but what could be. In other words, when analyzing students’ written work a teacher

could focus not on what the student said/ wrote, but rather on what a more proficient

user of the language would say/ write. This immediately creates a new opportunity, or

in Van Lier’s (2004) terms, an affordance for learning to take place. Mahboob and

Devrim (2013) would support this approach as they argue for feedback which

“scaffold(s) and support(s) students in order to achieve the potential that they may not

be able to achieve independently.” (p.107). An example from a student’s essay may

be useful in highlighting the difference between a narrow focus on syntactic errors,

and one which targets register. (see Table 1 below)

An approach which focusses exclusively on form might attempt to get the

student to rewrite the sentence focusing on the mistakes they made leading to Version

2. However, while it certainly can be said to focus on more appropriate forms (see

underlined words), it fails to account for the meanings, both shared and unshared

between the participants in the discourse, as well as the target register, whereas a

reformulated version from a proficient user may read something like Version 3. In

other words, the lexical priming inherent in Version 2, “account(s) only for what is

possible in a language and not for what is natural.” (Hoey, 2005: p.2)

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Version 1: Student’s example

“As everybody knows every things in this world have several causes, so the education

is the main cause of growth electronic games. This means the develop of education

let people and companies invention a lot of new games, such as play stations, Wii,

Xbox …”

Version 2: Correction based on form

As everybody knows everything in this world has several causes, and

education is the main cause of the growth in electronic games. This means the

development of education lets people and companies invent a lot of new games, such

as, Play Station, WII, Xbox …

(constructed)

Version 3:Reformulation accounting for register

Education has played an essential role in the growth of the electronic games

industry. In fact, without effective education systems it would be difficult to imagine

the development of new products, such as, Play Station, Wii, Xbox, …

(constructed)

Table 1

Before moving onto how this might be dealt with by a teacher, let’s take some

time to consider what it is about this version in terms of register that makes it sound

more proficient. Firstly in terms of Mode, we can say that the reformulated version

exhibits more grammatical metaphor allowing the ‘speaker’ to pack more information

into the noun clauses, e.g. ‘an essential role in the growth of the electronic games

industry’. Added to this is the more appropriate phrase, “it would be difficult to

imagine”, serving an interpersonal function of reflecting the writer’s viewpoint while

at the same time conforming to the appropriate convention of trying to make the

writing sound more objective through avoiding the personal pronoun ‘I’.

This paper explores the idea that in order to maximize the potential of

feedback on writing, approaching language from a functional perspective involving

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noticing and self-reformulation within the appropriate register, can indeed provide

opportunities for students to consider more natural and appropriate ways of wording

their meanings.

Self- reformulation in feedback

The type of reformulation under investigation in this study involves a

move away from the native-speaker teacher led reformulation outlined in Sachs and

Polio (2007), in that the input for the correction is coming from a bank of English, not

the teacher, thereby shifting the focus from the teacher to the student. This paper

agrees with Mahboob (cited in Mahboob and Devrim, 2013) that this provides a

valuable option for both first and second language English speaking teachers since the

complete reformulation does not originate from the teacher.

It was also felt this process accounted for the demands placed on second

language learners, when trying to explore different ways of wording meanings.

Schmidt (1990) points to information processing theories and the role a limited

capacity system plays in remembering, selecting and using data consciously noticed.

The process outlined above accounts for a limited capacity system, allowing students

the opportunity for “Control processing, associated with novice behavior, (which)

cannot be carried out concurrently with other demanding tasks.” (p. 136). The process

is also based on the premise which views input processing as a matter of information

passing through different storage structures, highlighting the fact that for information

to pass to long term memory store, the recipient, in this case the language learner, first

has to be made consciously aware of the features of the language, or ‘lexical priming’

(Hoey, 2005).

It is also worth noting that the feedback is realistic in terms of what it is trying

to achieve. It could definitely be argued that it would be unrealistic to expect the

student to suddenly produce Version 3 (see Table 1). The feedback, however, is

asking the student to investigate words and how they are primed for use which may

provide insights into language which in future may lead to more natural sounding

academic written language similar to Version 3. This is an important consideration for

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as Wells (1999, p. 25) points out, there needs to be a balance between what is new and

the “learner’s state of development and intellectual potential.”

Mahboob and Devrim (2013) present a topology of feedback types, based on

two criteria; how explicit the feedback was, and whether a rationale for the correction

was provided to students in the feedback. In Mahboob and Devrim’s terms, the type

of feedback investigated here would be termed ‘carrying’. Carrying involves explicit

feedback in the form of the students receiving some kind of option on how to adjust

their language with no rationale for the change offered. Since this investigation is

trying to establish to what extent students can notice and then use different target

language the use of rationales along with explicit feedback, termed ‘bridging’ (ibid.)

were not included.

The study

This study involved a group of 13 first year college students (hereafter referred

to as Students A- M) enrolled on an academic reading and writing course in a

women’s college in the United Arab Emirates. The aim of the academic reading and

writing course was to provide them with help in managing the demands of their

academic program.

For the purposes of this study students were asked to respond to feedback on

an essay they had written as part of the course. In addition to the usual correction code

used, the teacher provided a key word which could be used to reformulate the original

sentence highlighted by the comments tool (see Figure 1).

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Students were then asked to investigate the use of the word (in this case

‘REASON’ in a pedagogical corpus, which for the most part was comprised of

articles chosen because they represented the types of register that students would be

expected to engage in. These texts were part of their English program during the

previous year of study and were therefore familiar and linguistically accessible to the

students. Upon receiving the feedback students were asked to research their word

using the corpus and make a record of different uses of the word (see Figure 2). It was

felt this stage in the process would account for the “pedagogical implications of genre

theory encompass(ing) Vygotskian notions of scaffolding” (Mahboob et.al., 2010, p.

28) achieved through the models presented by the pedagogical corpus.

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Once they had completed this they were asked to submit a second draft (see

Figure 3), explicitly trying to include some of the items of language they had noticed

being modeled in their research stage. The students’ second drafts were then

compared with their first drafts with the hope that insights into the process of students

noticing language and trying to reformulate their own language would emerge.

Students had received some training in noticing language previously in the

course. This took the form of various exercises that focused students on collocation

and colligation, or involved them in identifying at the strata of lexicogrammar,

phrases which corresponded to the Field, Tenor and Mode aspects of register (see

Martin, 2013). However, it was understood at the time this study was conducted that

this was a skill that was still very much being developed, with some students finding

it difficult to identify useful starting and cutting off points in their identification of

phrasal language, as well as the grammatical patterns that certain phrases occurred

with.

Data collection and analysis

This being a small scale study the aim is not to provide any definitive account

of the role of feedback on writing. Rather it is an attempt to understand the challenges

and opportunities that are involved in understanding the processes students go through

when being asked to notice language in order to reformulate their own wordings. As

already stated above, it was felt that because students already knew the meanings they

were trying to convey, it would be interesting to see whether they could notice

phrases, or uses of language, and apply those to their meanings.

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The discussion regarding the results will focus on how many instances of

reformulation were carried out using appropriate or inappropriate forms, as well as the

role that the noticing of different forms appeared to play in this process. Judgments on

the appropriacy of the reformulations was carried out in relation to whether or not the

student was able to provide an instance of the word where both the meaning and form,

in terms of collocation as well as colligation, would be considered correct. For

example, in Tables 1-3 the data shows that this particular student was able to

reformulate their sentence using the incorrect collocation, “reasons of the increase”, to

a more appropriate form “reasons behind (the increase)” (a chunk noticed from the

pedagogical corpus). In this case the instance of reformulation was marked as correct.

However, in the same piece of data the inability of the student to reformulate “… and

how its affect on the family members.” to the more appropriate form “… and the

affects (that) it has on the family members.” was considered a failure by the student to

make use of appropriate wording, and as such was considered in a negative light.

In total the thirteen students involved in this study were collectively asked to

reformulate 103 instances of language. The following discussion will begin with

appropriately reformulated instances, discussing the role of attention. It will then

focus on the students’ use of the phenomenon of grammatical metaphor in the process

outlined above.

Discussion of data

The role of attention

The data reveals that 45% of all instances were reformulated correctly.

However, the percentage of appropriately reformulated instances can be further

broken down into 17% of instances where there was direct evidence from the

students’ recorded notes that students were able to take noticed forms in the

pedagogical corpus, and directly transfer those forms into their own writing

appropriately. That leaves 28% of the total instances where students were able to

reformulate their output using the key word provided by the teacher simply by

activating their own inter-language.

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An analysis of the instances of appropriately reformulated language clearly

suggests that the use of the key word in feedback was more successful at activating

existing inter-language than it was at getting students to find the appropriate form in

the pedagogical corpus and applying it to their meanings.

This ability of students to make use of the key word in conjunction with their

own inter-language points to Schmidt’s (1990) discussion on the role of

consciousness in learning, specifically in relation to attention. Schmidt has the

following to say:

“The concept of attention as a resource leads to a distinction between two

modes of information processing, based on the degree to which two tasks can be

performed concurrently (Wickens, 1984). Tasks that rely on automatic processing do

not require attention and can operate in parallel. Control processing, associated with

novice behavior, cannot be carried out concurrently with other demanding tasks.

Most theories assume that skilled behaviors begin as controlled processes and

gradually become automatic through practice.” (Schmidt, 1990:136)

What Schmidt seems to be arguing is that a ‘skilled behavior’ such as

proficiently wording complex meanings, requires attention to how meanings are

conveyed and the wordings that manifest themselves through them. His argument

clearly implies that it is through focusing attention in a controlled way, that students’

‘novice’ attempts at wording can be improved upon. The ability of students to

improve their wordings suggests focusing students’ attention in this way can allow for

the emergence of more complex forms of inter-language, in what can be assumed to

be an iterative process of language development. In Hoey’s (2005) terms this focusing

could lead to a refocusing on lexical priming enabling the learner to activate their

existing knowledge at a deeper level.

A closer investigation of the instances of reformulation by students reveals

that instances involving the noticing and subsequent appropriate use of chunks

seemed to appear mostly with more formulaic language. Instances included chunks

such as; “the growth of”, “want to …”, tend to …”, “pay attention”, “spend less time”.

However, when similarly formulaic chunks were attempted without having first being

noticed, students were not able to reword them in a more appropriate way. This

suggests that the process of first noticing formulaic chunks is an important step in

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getting students to enhance their ‘lexical primings’ and supports the point outlined by

Schmidt regarding the movement from controlled processing to automaticity. This is

also supported by Bitchener and Knoch’s proposition that “it may well be the case

that (written corrective feedback) proves to be more effective as a result of the

additional time and space ESL writers have to consider and process it.” (2009: 195).

Grammatical metaphor

It is interesting to note that a significant amount of the instances where

students were asked to reformulate their wordings, revolved around the use of

grammatical metaphor. As discussed above, Halliday (2003) identifies a taxonomy of

13 types of grammatical metaphor all involving the rewording of meanings brought

about by a shift where the specific meaning unit is expressed using a different

grammatical class, exemplified in academic writing as a linguistic device associated

with more abstract vertical type discourses (Martin, 2013).

The instances involving student reformulation under investigation here reveal

that students’ use of grammatical metaphor gravitated very strongly towards the use

of grammatical metaphor involving a shift from meanings construed through

processes (verbs), to the meanings being construed through entities (nouns). In fact, of

the 58 instances of reformulation involving grammatical metaphor, 44 involved

meanings shifting from being expressed through verbs to noun phrases. Other

instances of the use of grammatical metaphor can be viewed in Table 2 below.

The first point to make about the sentences in Table 2 is that they demonstrate

the processes involved in learners going through stages of language development.

While all the sentences above display incorrect forms, they also demonstrate a

growing ability for wording meanings in more complex forms. For example,

regarding the first type, “For example, children will focus on the games and never be

attention to their family.” could have been worded using a process as in “For

example, children will focus on the games and never attend to their family”. In this

case the student has been able to produce a wording demonstrating the use of a noun

phrase instead of making use of the verb ‘attend to’. In the second type where a

relator is transformed into an entity, for example, “Players usually fail at the first time

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of the playing but they keep on trying until they succeed and win.” The student has

worded their meaning again using a noun phrase, where they could have written the

same thing using a conjunction, as in “At first, players usually fail, but they keep on

trying until they succeed and win.” The mistake they have made revolves around the

use of the noun phrase where ‘the first time that they play’ would have been a more

proficient wording. The sentences and more generally the use of grammatical

metaphor will be discussed below, along with the students success at rewording their

meanings correctly.

Type of

Grammatical

Metaphor/

grammatical

function/

grammatical class

Student sentence Number

of

instances

1. Process to entity

Event = thing

Verb = noun

“For example, children will focus on the games and

never be attention to their family.” (student’s sentence)

44

2. Relator to entity

Conjunctive = thing

Conjunction = noun

“Players usually fail at the first time of the playing but

they keep on trying until they succeed and win.”

4

3. Dead metaphor “Also, children will less their time to set with their

parents.”

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Table 2: Breakdown of the use of grammatical metaphor in student

sentences

The ability of most students to show an ability to make use of grammatical

metaphor involving a shift from process to entity, demonstrates a movement into

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more technical or scientific ways of wording meanings. As Halliday (2003: 22) states,

“It is no exaggeration to say that grammatical metaphor is at the foundation of all

scientific thought.” This ability of students to word their meanings in this way points

to their ability to think in more technical ways. The ability to express this in a second

language is an important aspect in their academic development as a whole.

To a large extent the ability of students to successfully make use of this type

of grammatical metaphor seems to be due to the nature of this type of grammatical

metaphor. As mentioned above, much of the success of the self-reformulation

revolved around the use of more formulaic language. It is noteworthy that when

employing grammatical metaphor involving shifts from expressing happenings as

things, this very often involves the use of verb noun collocations. For example,

Student B when asked to reformulate the following sentence, “For example, children

will focus on the games and never be attention to their family.” was able with the help

of the pedagogical corpus to identify the collocate ‘pay’ for the item ‘attention’ and

subsequently reword their meaning appropriately to, “For example, children will

focus on the games and never pay more attention to their families.”

The formulaic nature of this type of grammatical metaphor was also evident in

other types of collocation within noun phrases. For example, Student G was able to

reword their initial sentence, “There are some reasons that push electronic games

growth.” to “There are also some reasons that encourage a growth in electronic

games.” having identified the noun/ preposition collocation ‘growth in’. It would

appear that the nature of this type of grammatical metaphor lends itself well to

facilitating the process of self-reformulation by students.

This is further corroborated by the fact that the other type of grammatical metaphor

which students seemed for the most part able to employ once being pointed in the

right direction was that of a ‘dead’ metaphor (Halliday, 2003). These instances refer

to those types of grammatical metaphor that have lost their ‘incongruence’. In other

words, because these metaphorical ways of wording meanings have become

lexicalized, they have emerged as non metaphorical ways of expressing meaning. In

the data collected in this study instances of this type of grammatical metaphor

included fixed phrases/ collocates such as; spend time, have time to, spend many

hours, make a profit, etc.

19

The ability of students to reformulate these types of grammatical metaphor

involving more formulaic language can also be analyzed from the perspective of rank

(Halliday, 1994). When looking at sentences involving the use of grammatical

metaphor, it is worth noting that it occurs at the rank of inter/ intra groups within the

sentence. The following sentence (Table 3 below) could be broken up into the

following clauses and their subsequent groups.

Sentence

Clause 1 Clause 2

Adjunct Noun

group

Verb

group

Noun

group

Adjunct Noun

group

Verb

group

Noun

group

“For

example,

children will

focus

on

the

games

and (they) (will)

never be

attention

to

their

family.”

Table 3: Student language at the rank of inter/ intra group

Following on from the discussion revolving around the types of grammatical

metaphor most in evidence in this study, the majority of grammatical metaphor

occurred within individual clauses. This either involved usage within a specific group,

for example, noun phrase, or between groups within a clause, for example, verb group

and noun group involving collocations as discussed above. However, what was

largely missing in student sentences was the ability to use the teacher’s feedback to

further reduce the number of clauses by packing more information into an individual

clause. In this study only two out of the 13 students showed an ability to engage with

this form of grammatical metaphor, however, when asked to reword their meanings

were unable to provide the appropriate wordings. For example, when Student L was

asked to reformulate the following sentence, “For example, people get an addiction

on electronic games because it keeps them away from their families.” They were

20

unable to reduce the number of clauses using the key word ‘reason’ to come up with a

single clause along the lines of, “The reason that electronic games keep people away

from their families is their addictive quality.”

It is possible that the type of feedback employed in this study affected these results.

As mentioned above in Mahboob and Devrim’s (2013) terms this type of feedback,

‘carrying’, was characterized by a higher level of explicitness, however, with no

rationale provided, as this investigation initially set out to investigate the process of

noticing and then using aspects of the target language. It would be interesting to

investigate whether or not a different type of feedback might provide different results.

In this particular case a more effective option might be ‘bridging’ (ibid.), since the

question of the number of clauses could be specifically mentioned along with the

concept of nominalization together with the rationale for it, leading the student to

think more about different ways of collapsing clauses.

Conclusion

This paper has focused on the use of a student led self- reformulation strategy,

facilitated by the provision of a key word by the teacher which reflects a more

proficient way of wording a student’s meaning. It is felt that this method of written

corrective feedback provides a useful learning opportunity as it allows the student to

notice the difference between the ways they word their meanings, and the wordings of

a more proficient user of the language. This relationship between students’ wordings

and a more proficient user’s was reflected in the data, since with the provision of a

key word students were able on a significant amount of occasions to appropriately

reformulate their language on their own, without going through the process of

noticing, especially in the cases of more formulaic language.

This ability to reformulate certain instances of language appeared closely

related to the type of language involved, specifically in relation to the use of

grammatical metaphor involving movement in the wording of meanings from

processes (verb phrases) to entities (noun phrases). The use and success of this type of

shift in the wording of meanings could be related to the fact that these occur in

students’ writing within the clause, and do not involve students in further reducing the

21

amount of clauses they are using to convey their meanings. The implications of this

for teachers would be that by identifying which types of grammatical metaphor

students find problematic, teachers can then plan accordingly to raise students’

awareness of how to engage with grammatical metaphor by packing more information

into less clauses. This might specifically mean language work in class which looks at

rewording chunks of text in an attempt to reduce the number of clauses thereby

facilitating more opportunities for inter-clausal work on grammatical metaphor. It

may also involve considering different options in guiding students in different ways of

doing feedback.

(6,374 words)

22

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