ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Julian Edge

Marc Helgesen

Peter Viney

Setsuko Toyama

Panelists: Julian Edge | Marc | Peter | Setsuko
Readers Comments: Abdellatif Zoubair | James Corbett
Date: May 2000

Topic: "When and how should I correct my students?"

Marc Helgesen

I don't disagree on the techniques Julian and Peter mention, but I'd like to bring up what I see as maybe the main question: when to do correction activities.

Over the years, there has been a lot of research on the effectiveness of reactive correction (correction after errors). And, as far as I know, there's no evidence that correction sticks. The issue, however, certainly does stick. It comes up regularily . Many teachers and learners feel a need for correction.

Perhaps we need to be looking toward a 'pro-active' type of correction. That is, learners can look at the errors that usually come up with a given grammar point or set of routines. They find and correct the errors. They are NOTICING how the language works. Then -- and this is the important part -- they go on to less controlled activities when the same language points are likely to come up. They can continue noticing.

While "noticing" as a specific technique for facilitating language acquisition may be new, the process itself isn't. In fact, you've almost certainly done it yourself. It often works something like this: The teacher, another student or the textbook points out some feature of the language. You think, "Really? I've never heard that." Then you go out into the real world and suddenly you're hearing it or seeing it a hundred times every day. It's not that you hadn't run into it before. It's that you never noticed.

We can set up that same situation in class. Look at the lesson you're going to teach. Think about the errors your students usually make. These could be based on functional routines:

(personal interests):
* What do you like sports?
* In my free time, I like listening to the music.

They can also be based on a lesson's grammar or usage points.
* I enjoy to ski.
* (My friend is coming to Japan) You had better take her to Mr. Fuji.
* Tokyo is bigger Osaka.

(Michael Swan's Practical English Usage, Oxford Univ. Press can help you figure out what problems are likely to come up.)

Write 6-10 of the sentences on the board. The sentences include errors. Have students work alone or in pairs to try to correct them.

Then you can check as a class, either by having the class tell you how to correct the sentences on the board or by using "finger signals" -- you point at one finger for each word and use gestures such as "add a word," "get rid of this word," "add an ending," etc. -- to help the students come up with the correct form.

This type of activity has been used for years as an end-of-class consolidation but that's a lost chance. But doing it in the middle of the lesson, you help the students notice the form and continue to notice as they progress through the class.

You may notice I'm not reacting to specific errors by specific individuals. I'm not reacting at all. If reactive correction doesn't work, I'm suggesting making it pro-active by doing a FonF (Focus on Form) that deals with the kinds of problems most of the learners need to deal with.

Panelists: Julian Edge | Marc | Peter | Setsuko
Readers Comments: Abdellatif Zoubair | James Corbett

Marc Helgesen, Miyagi Gakuin Women's College

Co-author of English Firsthand and Active Listening

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