Language practice and error correction

There is a lot more to an effective language-based lesson than just a ‘presentation’ or ‘teaching’ stage. Regardless of the approach teachers use, it is important not to underestimate how much practice students need.

Controlled practice tasks are often used immediately after presentation stages. They can be either oral or written, and the idea is to provide students with intensive practice of the target language. Students’ language use is ‘controlled’ or ‘restricted’, so they have very little choice about what to say or write, and the focus is on accuracy. It is important that teachers monitor attentively during controlled practice tasks so that they can check whether the target language has been understood and encourage on-the-spot correction as needed.

In contrast, freer practice tasks provide opportunities for students to use the target language together with all the other English they know. Teachers still need to monitor but as the aim of this stage is fluency rather than accuracy, it is better to monitor unobtrusively and make notes about students’ language use rather than interrupting them while they are speaking.

Dealing with students’ errors

During controlled practice activities, teachers use a mixture of self-correction, peer correction and teacher correction to deal with students’ errors. There are various advantages and disadvantages associated with each of these approaches to correction.

When a student manages to correct his or her own mistake, this is often a very motivating and memorable experience for the student involved. If students are unable to correct their own mistakes, this is potentially embarrassing and demotivating, although teachers are often more concerned about this than the students themselves. Mistakes are a natural part of the language learning process and if self-correction is handled well, it is extremely valuable.

Peer correction can be worthwhile because other students are encouraged to think about the same piece of language, which may also be difficult for them. Finally, we come to teacher correction. Although it has the advantage of being quick and efficient, research has shown that it is less memorable for students, so it is important that teacher correction does not dominate.

During freer practice tasks, teachers have an excellent opportunity to gauge how well the students are using the target language. Then when the activity is complete, they can wrap up with a brief correction slot. For example, if the students were practising the past simple (positive and negative forms), a teacher might hear the following sentences:

1. Yesterday I go to the supermarket.

                                    2. I didn’t anything interesting yesterday.

                                    3. I bought a new dress on Saturday.

                                    4. I didn’t get up very early this morning.

                                    5. I play football on Sunday afternoon.

                                    6. I didn’t watched TV last night.

The first time teachers use a correction slot with a group of students, it is worth doing a couple of examples with the class to show them how it works. Ask them to look at the first sentence and decide if it is right or wrong. Elicit that it is wrong and elicit the correction onto the board. Do the same with the second sentence if necessary and then ask students to work in pairs and continue with the rest of the sentences. Finally, round off the activity with class feedback.