Principles/G

uidelines for
Remedial

General
Principles
for Remedial
Activities
Identify Students
Determine types of activity
Effect of mistakes on understanding
Feelings of learners
Learners learning style
Varieties of strategy

Identify
The teacher needs to identify the students who
need remedial work.
Firstly, identify the students from their learning
behaviour in class, for example, their response
throughout the lesson especially the response to the
reading activities and work assigned throughout the
lesson.
If they consistently show lack of understanding in
their reading then they should be identified for
remedial work.

Determining Activity Type

One of the steps is to check the frequency of mistakes the student

makes throughout the lesson.

Some mistakes are found very often in the learners reading. Others are
rarely found. This can determine the type of remedial work suitable for
the student concerned.

The teacher should carefully study each mistake chosen, try to find the
reasons why the learners make the mistake, and look at ways for reteaching or correcting, using new techniques and procedures and a
new way of looking at and explaining the problem.

For example, a pupil always mispronounced /b/ as /d/. Hence, the teacher
need to provide activity that teach how to differentiate these two alphabets.

Effect of Mistakes
Some mistakes are found frequently in a learners work but

they do not make it difficult for anyone to understand what

the learner is trying to say.
Mistakes with a and the, plurals, agreement, and many

pronunciation mistakes are like this.

Other mistakes, like the use of stress, vocabulary, and certain

sentence patterns, make it very difficult for someone to

understand what the learner is trying to say. These kinds of
mistakes need to be addressed.
This is more to Reading Aloud.

Learners Feelings
If the learners are not really worried by the mistakes or they see no
value in correcting them, remedial work will probably be unsuccessful.
The learners should be able to see that it is possible to make great
improvement and that they are really learning something useful.
Teacher plays important role to convince the learners that reading is
an important part of living and they need to master it.
Remedial work should not be just a reminder of the learners past
failures instead it should enable learners to see it as a way of getting
the informed correction that they do not get outside the class.

When?
The activities can be carried out
when the class is doing
assigned work and the
teacher can give the
students who need remedial
work more attention and
further teaching.
Outside the classroom when time
is much needed