Correcting oral mistakes

There are several reasons why it is important to correct oral mistakes.

Firstly, correction allows the student to realize how much they have
improved in their management of the L2. Secondly, when a student
gets corrected he can grasp a better understanding of how the L2
works. Furthermore, students’ confidence is strengthened by
corrections because they know that they can rely on the teacher to
check whether something they want to express is right or not.

When to correct will depend on the type of activity that is being

developed. For instance, if an accuracy work is being carried, it is
commonly advised to perform the correction immediately so that the
student is able to apply it at the moment. In contrast, when the task
focus is on fluency, it is pertaining to delay the correction, in order to
avoid distracting the learner from his communicating efforts.

On activities where the stress is improving accuracy, a strategy that

can be used is reformulation, which consists on the teacher
repeating a modified version of the sentence the student has just
said. For example, if the student says: “I go to Cusco last year”. The
teacher can say, “So, you went to Cusco last year”, stressing the word
“went” and waiting for the student to realize what the error was.
Another strategy to correct accuracy during an oral activity is to use
echoing. For instance, a student says: “I listen to music in my free
times”. The teacher repeats “in your free times?” with an
interrogative intonation and stressing the word “times”. Then, the
teacher waits for the student to self correct and if that does not
happen, ask classmates to help the student.

Finally, in the case of fluency activities, a way for the teacher to

correct errors is to listen carefully to the dialogues of the students
and take note of the errors present. Following, the teacher can write
on the whiteboard a collection of sentences with errors -without
identifying the authors of them- and then ask students to work in
groups or pairs to find where the errors are. After giving them some
time, the teacher can check the sentences and explain the ones that
remain unresolved with the whole class.

Bibliography:
Bartram, Mark & Waltron, Richard. (1991) Correction-Mistake
Management. Language Teaching Publications.

Brown, Douglas. (2000) Principles of Language Learning and

Teaching.
Pearson Longman. UK

Harmer, Jeremy. (2007) The Practice of English Language Teaching.

Pearson Longman. UK.

Hedge, Tricia. (2000) Teaching and Learning in the Language

Classroom.
Oxford University Press. UK

Lowes, Ricky & Target, Francesca. (1998) A Guide to Learner

Autonomy.
Richmond Publishing.

Scrivener, Jim (2005) Learning Teaching. Macmillan Books for

Teachers.

Webpages:

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?catid=59438&docid=146448

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?docid=146455