New ways of correcting spoken errors

46
Педагогика
«Молодой учёный»
.
№ 5.2 (109.2)
 .
Март, 2016 г.
niques suggested for correcting students’ errors on the spot. 
Mistakes are part of our life; we all make mistakes now and 
then. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes as long as 
we learn from them and avoid repeating them over and over.
To correct students’ errors has always been, and will al-
ways be the concern of most teachers. Some teachers are in 
favor of immediate correction, while others are in favor of de-
layed correction. Some would even go further to consider the 
whole process as time–consuming. In this article, I would 
like to dwell, based on my practical experience, upon this 
controversial issue to offer some suggestions for both imme-
diate and delayed correction.
When students are corrected in front of their classmates, 
they feel offended and get discouraged. They expect teachers 
to continually correct them during classes. Failure to do so 
is likely to create confusion and suspicion on the part of the 
students. As such, teachers are expected to strive to find 
most creative ways to deal with this problem that most typi-
cally arises. They need to encourage and stimulate their stu-
dents to participate in class without any fear of making mis-
takes [1].
Most students refuse to answer to the teacher in the class-
room on the ground that they are most likely to be the laugh-
ingstock of their class fellows. Consequently, they get dis-
couraged and feel humiliated. They refrain from responding 
to the teacher’s questions which may deprive them of a valu-
able learning opportunity.
Generally speaking, there are three types of oral mistakes 
that need to be corrected during class-discussion. These are: 
grammatical, vocabulary, and pronunciation mistakes. This 
leads us to a very important question: should we interrupt 
our students during discussion or avoid interrupting them as 
much as we can? To answer this question we need to ask our-
selves whether the focus is on accuracy or fluency. In fact, to 
save our students the embarrassment and in order not to dis-
tract them, we can employ less provocative approaches. One 
way is to make notes of the most common mistakes made 
by a student to be discussed later. Write them on the board 
without revealing the name of the student in order not em-
barrass him/her. Ask the rest of the class to identify these 
mistakes and correct them. Another way is to raise an eye-
brow, or say, “Excuse me?” Or the teacher can ask for repe-
tition without indicating the mistake.
Also we can employ another approach called, ‘selec-
tive correction’. In this case, the teacher decides to correct 
only certain errors. These errors can be decided by the objec-
tives of the lesson, or the exercise that is being done. In other 
words, if students are focusing on past simple tense, then 
only errors related to this grammatical area need to be cor-
rected. Other mistakes are ignored.
In conclusion, the teacher can decide which is the most 
beneficial and effective approach to error correction based 
on the situation itself. It will help students overcome their 
shyness and play an active role in class discussions without 
being afraid of making mistakes. In this case, they would ac-
knowledge and accept their mistakes as part of the learning 
process instead of being offended when they are corrected by 
their teacher [2].
There some ways of correcting spoken errors are pre-
sented:
1. Facial expression. For example, raise an eyebrow, tilt 
your head to one side or give a slight frown. Most people will 
do this naturally, but there is a slight chance a teacher’s ex-
pression will be too critical or too subtle for your students 
to pick up on, and you can (amusingly) practice facial ex-
pressions in a teaching workshop by participants communi-
cating certain typical classroom messages (“move over there 
to work with this person”, “work in pairs” etc.) using just 
their heads and faces, including feedback on spoken errors 
in that list.
2. Body language.
 
The problems with using body lan-
guage to show errors could also be that it is taken as very 
serious criticism or that it is too vague. Possibilities include 
using your hands (rolling a hand from side to side to mean 
“so-so attempt”; making a circle by moving your index finger 
to mean “one more time”; or a cross with fingers, open palms 
or even forearms to show a very clear “no” or “wrong” — 
probably only suitable for a team game etc where the respon-
sibility is shared), head (tilted to one side to mean “I’m not 
sure that sounds correct”), or shoulders (hunched to rein-
force “I don’t understand what you are saying”). Again, prac-
ticing this in a teaching workshop can be useful, as can elic-
iting other body language teachers could have used after an 
observation.
3. Point at the correct language. If you have something on 
the correct form easily accessible on the whiteboard, in the 
textbook or on a poster, just pointing at it can be a subtle but 
clear way of prompting students to use the correct language. 
What you point at could be the name of the tense or word form 
they are supposed to be using, a verb forms table or the ac-
tual correct verb form, a grammatical explanation, or another 
grammatical hint such as “future”, “prediction” or “polite”.
4. Repeat what they said. This can mean repeating the 
whole sentence, one section of it including the wrong part, 
the sentence up to the wrong part, the sentence with the 
wrong part missed out (with maybe a humming noise to 
show the gap that should be filled) or just the wrong part. You 
can illustrate that you are showing them an error and give 
some hint as to which bit is wrong by using a questioning 
tone (for everything you say or just for the wrong part). This 
method is overused by some teachers and can sound patron-
izing if used too often or with the wrong tone of voice, so try 
to mix up the different versions of it described here and to al-
ternate with methods described in the other tips.
5. Just say the right version. The students can then repeat 
the correct version or tell you what the difference between 
the two sentences was and why their version was wrong. Be-
cause the students don’t do much of the work in this way of 
being corrected, it might not be as good a way of remem-
bering the correction as methods where you give more subtle 
clues. Its advantages are that it is quick and suits cultures, 
classes and students that think of elicitation as shirking by 

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