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<\/a><\/p>\nI feel really strongly about errors as a language teacher. It\u2019s so interesting, because I think in this profession, we want to be accurate, effective and correct in our communication. And of course, we want that for our students. The instinct sometimes can be to correct everything that\u2019s wrong. We think if we correct an error, then we know what\u2019s wrong. And that\u2019s true. That said, it\u2019s not particularly helpful. Here is one of my favorite activities for French, ELT and Spanish classes. I can’t wait to try it as an Italian and German learner, too.<\/p>\n
If you think about it, we communicate more with fluency and more effectively with being able to say more things than we do without necessarily being able to say things more accurately in many cases. We\u2019re dealing with two things here. We want to teach students what\u2019s right, and we want for ourselves to know what is correct and what isn\u2019t correct. That\u2019s important. But we also want to be able to help students keep working on fluency so they can communicate more effectively, and they\u2019re not going to do that without errors. It\u2019s not realistic. If you tell someone you\u2019re not going to speak this new language until you don\u2019t make any errors, it\u2019s probably not ever going to happen. You\u2019re just going to have to accept errors as part of the deal. Errors are okay. We have to teach students how to take risks, allow them to take risks, and allow them to make mistakes. They\u2019re going to need that during all their practice. And as we know, practice makes perfect.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s all different sorts of theories on what we should do to correct errors. I think a lot of us repeat back and forth and back to students what they\u2019ve said without explicit corrections. Some people correct absolutely everything, stopping them mid-sentence. There\u2019s so many different ways that people do this.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a proficiency-oriented teacher. Early in my career when I was working in ELT, the practical side of it all became a real focus. I love to teach my students fluency. And again, I have to accept some of these errors. But I can\u2019t accept all of them. I can\u2019t let all of them go.<\/p>\n
One activity I really like to do is make error correction a game. I take an assignment- it can be a journal entry, it can be an essay, it can be a letter- any type of writing or speaking that students do.<\/p>\n
Take a whole bunch of their errors out, and write them out in some type of format so that they\u2019re not going to recognize the handwriting (really important). If it\u2019s speaking, you want to write them down or say them yourself and record them. It\u2019s really important that they have no idea who it came from. There\u2019s no giveaways. Type them out, or hand write them, and give them back to the students. You might want to put this down in the form of a worksheet, but one way I really like to do it is to display them somehow on the board and only let them see one at a time.<\/p>\n
The students try to make the error correct. A lot of times, students will recognize that it\u2019s theirs. If you have an atmosphere of risk taking in the classroom, they wont mind this. It might bother them the first time they see it, but it won\u2019t in the future because they\u2019ll have fun doing this. I usually let the students decide what reward they will get for a correct correction- maybe some points or play Euros. After the error, they\u2019re going to write down what they think is the correct sentence. Of course, you give them however much time you think they need. For the beginners, these sentences are going to be shorter than for the more advanced ones. You know your students, so you know how this needs to go. You\u2019re going to then make the correction for them, and they either get their point, their check, their Euros (maybe dollars or pounds in ELT) whatever it is that they\u2019re getting, or they don\u2019t. You might want to start them off with a little quantity of points or numbers or play euros, something fun that you get to incorporate and recycle numbers. For ELT, I might have something American (where I am from) or British (where I live).<\/p>\n
I give you a few examples here so you have the incorrect sentences and then you reveal the correct sentences, or you can correct the sentences in front of them, but I think you get the point. This is a really powerful way to teach grammar in context. You\u2019re not necessarily getting into grammar and structures and you\u2019re not beating grammar to death, but you\u2019re definitely correcting their grammar.\u00a0 They\u2019re all talking about the right and wrong way as well. You\u2019re going to hear them really go back to their thought processes and share their understandings with each other. You\u2019re probably going to see the same patterns of mistakes. You\u2019re going to see some really powerful in-context grammar lessons doing this. Regardless of it is ELT, Spanish, German\u2013we all pass through stages and make the same types of errors in each.<\/p>\n
How do you correct errors? How do you deal with them?<\/p>\n
Here are some examples from Spanish.<\/p>\n