Why do students make errors? Are errors bad? Should we even bother correcting them? We answer all these questions and more…
Our References on Error Correction
Error Correction in Speaking - The Fun Way: Herbert Puchta (Teaching Teenagers Tip #4)
Dr. Stephen Krashen Plenary KOTESOL International Conference 2011
ISTEK ELT 2013 Concurrent Keynote - Jeremy Harmer "Does Correction Work? It Depends Who You Ask!"
Tracy Yu: Welcome to the "TEFL Training Institute Podcast." The bite‑size TEFL podcast for teachers, trainers and managers.
Ross Thorburn: Hi, everyone.
Tracy: Hi, welcome to our podcast.
Ross: A lot of the time when we're hanging out and we speak Chinese to each other, I often ask you to correct my Chinese if I make any mistakes. When you do, it's really annoying.
[laughter]
Tracy: Why is that?
Ross: I don't know. It's like there's something about being corrected. You always feel that you're making a comment about how bad my Chinese is and it really annoys me. I don't know, it's funny. I always say, "Can you please correct me more?" but when you do, it's really annoying.
Tracy: Do you think that helps you?
Ross: Yes, but it's bad for your motivation because you feel annoyed by it.
Tracy: What's the point? [laughs]
Ross: The point is that today our podcast is about error correction and helping students and trainees and stuff learn from their mistakes.
Tracy: As usual, we got three main questions or areas that we're going to discuss.
Ross: First one is, why do students make errors?
Tracy: The second one, should we correct errors?
Ross: Finally, what principles are there in correcting students' errors?
Why do students make errors?
Ross: Why do students make errors?
Tracy: One reason is, is an evidence of learning and is a part of the learning process. We learn how to drive and we learn how to...
Ross: Swim. [laughs]
Tracy: ...cook, how to swim and new skills. We usually make some mistakes and then from the mistakes, we can learn how to do it better.
Ross: Yeah, no one does anything perfectly the first time.
Tracy: The first time, yeah.
Ross: That's impossible. Something I found really interesting about developmental errors is this thing called...we're not going to go too much into the weeds here with Second Language Acquisition, but I just wanted to mention this because I thought it was so cool.
This is an example of U‑shaped acquisition from Rod Ellis' book, "Second Language Acquisition." Instead of me reading them out, Tracy, can you just make a sentence with each of them and I'll do a commentary?
Tracy: Sure.
Ross: This is for students acquiring ate, as in the past tense of eat.
Tracy: I eat pizza last night.
Ross: This is when you've not been able to mark the past tense, that's all, which is the first stage, and then...?
Tracy: I ate pizza last night.
Ross: Really interesting, right? The first type of past tense verbs that students acquire are irregular ones, which Tracy just learned. Next?
Tracy: I eated pizza last night.
Ross: This is after you've started to learn the past tense rule of adding ‑ed onto the end of things, but you've overused it. You've overgeneralized it.
Tracy: I ated pizza last night.
Ross: Here you've made some hybrid between the two, and the final one?
Tracy: I ate pizza last night.
Ross: Great.
Tracy: Which is correct.
Ross: Which is, yeah, you've now acquired it. Congratulations.
Tracy: [laughs] Thank you, but the second and the fifth stage, I used the words correctly, but it doesn't mean I was at the same stage of acquiring the language.
Ross: Yeah, which is so interesting. This is such a great example, because it shows how making errors is evidence that you're developing.
Anyway, that was the developmental kind. What's the other main reason that students make errors?
Tracy: Maybe they directly translate from their first language to the language they study?
Ross: It's not always a direct translation, but yeah, call it L1 transfer.
Tracy: Transfer, yeah.
Ross: A long time ago, people thought that all the errors came from that. Gradually, they came to realize that that's not the case and a lot of the errors that students make are the same regardless of their first language. Part of the transfer errors, they're actually harder to get rid of than the developmental errors.
Should teachers correct students’ errors in ESL classes?
Ross: Let's talk about the next one. Should we correct errors? What do you tell teachers on teacher training courses?
Tracy: I think it really depends. Sometime, I tell them to ignore that.
Ross: Wow, OK. When do you say to ignore errors?
Tracy: Two main scenarios. Number one, if it's not really in a learning setting. For example, you haven't seen the students for a while and saw the students, have a chat, and then students really talkative and very motivated and probably make some mistakes and then have errors in their sentences. Really, to be honest, I don't think that's a great context for us to correct their errors.
Their motivation was not to learn much, they want to communicate with you. It's probably going to demotivate the students. The second scenario is if the error is really not impeding the communication that much, you probably want to ignore it.
Ross: Yeah, right. Actually, I'm going to play you a little Jeremy Harmer quote about what you were talking about there, this process of deciding if you should correct an error or not.
[pre‑recorded audio starts]
Jeremy Harmer: Every time a student makes a mistake in class, you have to make a judgment. That's actually not true, you have to make about four or five judgments. The first judgment you have to make is, "Was it wrong?" The second judgment is, "Actually, what was wrong?" because sometimes it's not that easy to work out what was wrong.
The third judgment you have to make is, "Should I correct it or should I just let it go?" The fourth judgment you have to make is, "Should I correct it or should somebody else correct it?" Suddenly in that one moment when students just make a mistake, you have to work out what to do.
[pre‑recorded audio ends]
Tracy: There are four main things that we need to consider immediately when the student make mistake. They are who, when, what, and how.
Ross: What was the error? Yeah, because this is sometimes difficult to tell. Is it a pronunciation mistake or is it lexical or is it grammatical or...?
Tracy: Who's going to correct it?
Ross: It could be the teacher. You could try and do peer correction, you could try and get the person to correct themselves, I suppose.
Tracy: Yeah, or even small groups some times. When? Should you correct the error immediately, or you're waiting? We always say delayed.
Ross: The last one was?
Tracy: How. What kind of techniques you are going to use?
Ross: Good, hang on to that thought, because we'll talk about that in the next segment. I actually wanted to play another quote. This one's from Stephen Krashen. This is what Stephen Krashen thinks about error correction.
[pre‑recorded audio starts]
Stephen Krashen: Output plus correction. You say something, you make a mistake, someone corrects it. You change your idea of what the rule is. The six‑year‑old ESL child comes into the class and says to the teacher, "I comes to school every day."
Teacher says, "No, no, I come to school every day." The child is supposed to think, "Oh yeah, that s doesn't go on the first person singular, it goes on the third person singular."
I think that's utter fantasy, but that's the idea.
[pre‑recorded audio ends]
Ross: It's quite interesting. He thinks error correction is a complete waste of time. Dave Willis, the task‑based learning guru, pardon, he's someone else, just thinks error correction doesn't work.
Tracy: Oh really?
Ross: Not everyone says that but I just wanted to give an example of both.
Tracy: That's quite confusing though. Should we correct or...?
Ross: There's other research that says that you should and it does make a difference in some situations, but not in other ones. I think there's the research, not quite conclusive.
Tracy: Definite law students haven't read about this research.
[laughter]
Tracy: They have really high demand in classroom from teachers to correct their errors, because otherwise, you don't think they learn anything.
Ross: For me, that's true. That at least some of the value in coming to a language class is you get your errors corrected, because input, you can buy a book or you can watch TV. There's lots of ways you could get input, maybe not always great for practice. A lot of people in a lot countries do have opportunities to practice English.
Here in Beijing, you could just go to a Starbucks and try and find a foreigner or some people might have to speak English for work. The big advantage of going to a language class is that you get correction.
Tracy: This makes me think of the students actually, in my class which I just taught this afternoon. Is about some phonological aspects and she told me at the end of the class, she said, "Oh no, I've finally realized I have no knowledge, no idea and no awareness of the features of connected speech, because I study English for so long, but I always have trouble to understand people in the listening."
If I didn't have that correction in my lesson, I think she'd probably not be able to aware of the features for a long time.
Ross: Yeah, absolutely. Good, you should send that to Stephen Krashen.
How should teachers correct students’ ESL errors?
Ross: Let's talk about some principles for error correction. We'll just pretend that we've ignored Stephen Krashen, we've decided that when students actually made an error. What do you think are some good ideas or best practices or advice on correcting errors?
Tracy: I will say, the first one is, don't correct all the errors.
Ross: Yeah, it'd be way too many, right?
Tracy: Yeah.
Ross: That'd be really annoying.
Tracy: [laughs] Yeah. They won't have much time to really practice.
Ross: I think as well, we know from Second Language Acquisition that not all of the errors that you correct are actually going to help the students.
Tracy: Just try to prioritize errors. Of course, again, the fundamental stuff. Was your lesson aims are and then what kind of language or skills that you are trying to focus on in your class. Stick to those. That should be prioritized.
Ross: Another thing to add is correct errors that effect more students instead of fewer students. I agree, if it's in your plan, then correct it, but I also think if it's a problem all the students are having or most of the students are having, then it's probably worth correcting.
That's a bit about what to correct, how about some how to correct? Actually, can I play you another quote? I want to make a record for the number of quotes, someone talked, it's number three.
Tracy: OK, go on.
Ross: This is Herbert Puchta, I think his name is, talking about an error correction technique.
Herbert Puchta: Imagine a class where lots of students have problems getting the famous third person "S" right. Take a piece of paper and write an "S" on it. Stick it somewhere on the wall. When a student makes that mistake, point to the paper, wait and smile. Most probably, the student who's just made the error will notice what you want them to do and correct themselves.
Ross: I thought that was interesting, he also chose the third persons "S" as his example. I think what he's trying to say there is that's a really in‑obtrusive way of correcting a student. You can correct someone as their speaking, by pointing at something, but you don't have to interrupt them.
Another one for how, this may be also related to who, is to try and get the students involved in their correction.
Tracy: Yeah, I get it, but sorry, I just feel like sometimes...We talk about who and we always want to encourage students themselves to correct themselves. The techniques in how teacher try to raise their awareness of their error is repeating the error.
Ross: It's interesting that you bring that up because...or the other one is called a recast when the students said something wrong and you repeat it back to them, but they say it right. There's research that shows that when you do that, a lot of students don't realize that you are correcting an error. They just think you're repeating something.
Tracy: Exactly.
Ross: What are some ways of raising students' awareness that they've made an error?
Tracy: What I experimented today was WeChat. Of course, I think there is...
Ross: For those of you know in China, WeChat's an instant messenger type thing.
Tracy: I ask the students to join the group.
Ross: A group chat.
Tracy: Yeah, group chat. Yeah, before the lesson started. Almost at the end of the class, I listen to what they said, I posted on four or five sentences into the group chat so everybody can see it.
Ross: What's in these sentences? Mistakes the students have made?
Tracy: Mistakes and also correct sentences together. Of course, I changed some of the words they are using or the pronouns or places. Yeah, I just, talk to your partners and then tell each other which one you think correct and which one is not correct and the then you think the one is not correct and then you can type the correct ones and then send to the group.
Ross: I think you also hit on another thing there, that's something to get students involved, but another thing is that, the anonymity. Not singling someone out.
Tracy: Another thing, I always tell teachers. There should be a correction circle. You raise their awareness, usually we stop and they move on, but not, there should be another step to complete the circle which is, give students another chance to use the language correctly by themselves. For example, the pizza mistakes.
Ross: I ated pizza yesterday.
Tracy: I mmm pizza yesterday.
Ross: I ate pizza yesterday.
Tracy: What did you have for breakfast today?
Ross: I ate cereal for breakfast today.
Tracy: Really? Do you really? [laughs]
Ross: No, I actually drank coffee today, but...
[laughter]
Ross: ...this is a different verb. I didn't think it would fit your point.
Tracy: You know what I mean, just...
Ross: Yeah, give the students a chance.
Tracy: It's something can be really simple. Just ask a similar question and they can answer.
Errors Wrap up
Tracy: We talk a lot about correcting errors, but the examples we were using really focus on the language itself, but don't forget about error correction also related to performance or behavior in class.
Ross: What does that mean?
Tracy: For example, teaching young learners and if the student wasn't well behaved, I think we also need to...
Ross: Give feedback.
Tracy: ...give feedback on that.
Ross: Yeah, good point. Bye everyone, thanks for listening.
Tracy: Bye.
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