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Correcting techniques in speaking and writing

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There are different techniques that can be used to correct learners’ utterances:

1. He teacher doesn’t interrupt the learners, makes notes of the mistake in her notebook and then makes the correction by reminding the learners of the rules and correct language forms.

2. The teacher interrupts the learner but only if the learner gets stuck and can’t express what he/she wants to say. (Correction is the form of guidance).

3. The teacher gets other learners to make on-the-spot corrections.

4. The teacher doesn’t interrupt the learner, makes notes of the mistakes and then brings out the most serious ones giving the learners the chance to self-correct.

5. The teacher interrupts the learner’s utterance by giving some signals each time he/she hears the mistake (e.g. snapping fingers, clapping hands, raising eyebrows, repeating the mistake in a questioning tone, saying “Is that right?/Sorry? I don’t quite get you/ What do yoy mean by..?”etc)The learner tries to correct him/herself.

6. The teacher doesn’t interrupt the learner but gets other learners to make notes of the mistakes and then correct them and go over them with the whole class.

7. The teacher makes notes of all the mistakes but doesn’t correct them immediately after the activity in front of the whole class. S/He does it after the class individually with each learner.

These and other techniques can be evaluated according to different criteria. Our choice will depend on:

· Focus (accuracy or fluency)

· Time spent (time-saving or time-consuming)

· Physical involvement (involvement of the whole class or teacher correcting one individual student

· Psychological involvement (teacher-correction/ peer-correction/ self-correction)

· Attitude (more intimidating or less intimidating)

· When (immediate correction, when the mistake is still fresh in learners’ minds, or delayed correction when learners may forget what the actual mistake was and/or mix it up with something else).

Now let us deal with correction techniques of learners’ written works. Many factors influencing on ways of correcting them will depend on the same factors: focus on fluency (in an essay) or on accuracy (in dictation), learners’ age and level of proficiency (correcting the mistakes of young learners and just underlining some in the works of senior schoolchildren), stage of learning (evaluation will also depend on that) etc. One of the problems is that there are two types of learners: those who like their written work to be as correct as possible and those who use their written work “to test the boundaries” of the language. It is the teacher’s responsibility to help both groups.

So the teacher usually indicates first those errors which interfere with understanding. They should be underlined and corresponding symbol be used in the margin (e.g. WO, Lex/Voc, Art, Prep etc).Make sure to indicate a limited number of errors since learners can absorb only a few pieces of information at a time.

Then focus on the most important and repeated errors, which may confuse the reader most (e.g. run-on sentences, wrong reference etc). Do not penalize learners for something that has not been taught yet.

Write some commentary. It’s important to start with giving some positive feedback so that learners do not feel discouraged by their errors. Focusing on what they do right can motivate learners to write more and to experiment with the language. Do not forget that teachers’ responsibility is their response-ability.

Correction work may be done as a game, for instance “Maze”. Collect the learners’ most typical errors, make a list of correct and incorrect sentences (up to 15) and prepare a maze with red and black lines and numbers. The first sentence is marked “IN”. The learners are to start from “IN”, read it and if they think it’s correct, move along the black line to #3, if wrong, move along the red line to # 14. Learners are to mark their route (in-14-6…). They are to get to “OUT” visiting all numbers and only once.

What are the advantages of that technique? It’s a funny game. Material is recycled without the revision getting boring. Learners may work in groups, pairs or individually. No immediate teacher’s interference is needed. If learners come back to the same number or get to “OUT” without visiting all the numbers, they realize they have made a mistake somewhere and are to start again. Mazes are easy to prepare. One and the same maze can be used to work with different sets of sentences, with different material. Several mazes may be prepared to vary the route.

And some concluding remarks. Every teacher is used to being asked “Can you say…?” or “Cannot you say…?” You know that your questioner will be happy with a decisive “yes” or “no”. The route to unpopularity is to reply “Well, it’s difficult to say… It depends on the context… I’ve never heard/seen it myself but it’s definitely possible…” For many learners and teachers black and white answers are fine, but grey is an unpopular colour in the classroom. However, the problem of acceptable/unacceptable should be often translated in terms “likely/unlikely/very unlikely”. Language is constantly changing and some changes have not been fixed by dictionaries yet. To be on the safe side, do not be afraid to say that you cannot answer definitely on the spot but need to look it up and verify. Do not spread mistakes and do not forget to discuss it next time you meet your learners.

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