Helping Learners Correct Their Errors

Activity: Helping Learners to Correct their Errors

Purpose: When students make errors it is a best practice to help them correct their own errors rather than give them the answers.

Prep time: None

Materials: Whatever the students are currently working on

Prep: None

Procedure:

Here are some general strategies to use when doing error correction. Specific examples are below.

• Help learners notice discrepancies between what they wrote/said and the examples.
• Help learners notice discrepancies between something that they answered correctly and the error.
• Ask learners how they found the answer (ask this for correct answers too).
• Ask learners why they think that is the answer.
• Ask learners to read what they wrote aloud and then ask what is missing.
• Help learners narrow down their answer choices.

Example: Multiple Choice Worksheet

For example, let’s say that a learner circled D for question number one on this worksheet. The teacher responds by first asking the learner to read the question aloud. Then she asks the student to point to the answer in the reading material. Next, she points out that this answer choice is under the wrong category. She asks the student where the correct category is and then asks the student to scan for the correct answer.

Example: Modals Worksheet (When you click on this link, you’ll go to a page that says Road Safety – Intermediate at the top. Click on the second worksheet in the list, which says Modals Worksheet – (“Have to/Don’t have to”).

As another example, let’s say that a learner is filling out this modals worksheet. She answered number one correctly, but she wrote, “A learner don’t have to get 100 percent on the written test” for number five. The teacher responds by asking the learner to read number one aloud and asks her to point to the place in the chart at the top of the worksheet that shows the correct answer. Then the teacher asks her to read number five aloud and to point to the chart. If she points to the wrong place the teacher will tell her that it is in a different place on the chart.

Best Practice: What is Teacher Talk?

“Teacher talk” is everything you say when you're in the classroom. If you are someone who habitually thinks out loud, pay a lot of attention to your “teacher talk”!

Focused, deliberate speaking is most critical in Beginning and Intermediate ESL settings, but even Advanced and GED instruction can benefit from it.

Here are a few points to ponder:

Which do you think is easier for ESL students to understand?
A. "I'm gonna go ahead and ask you all to turn to page 34."
B. "Please go to page 34."

Which statement is the most authentic?
A. "I'm going to introduce myself to you now. 'Hello, my name is Emily.'"
B. "Hello, my name is Emily."

Which definition is most useful to your students during a lesson on the American K-12 education system?
A. "The word Kindergarten comes from the German, meaning 'a garden of children.'"
B. "Kindergarten is school for young children. It's the level before first grade. There is a lot of reading, art, and play."

The answers are all B because they are comparatively clutter-free, authentic, and relevant.

Try tackling a section of your next lesson with your teacher talk in mind.

Best Practice: Pre-Teaching

Every activity has three parts: the introduction, the activity itself, and some kind of follow up. The introduction to an activity is called pre-teaching. This involves getting students ready to a reading, writing, listening or speaking task by:

• activating students' prior knowledge to link the new material to something they may already know
• teaching key, unfamiliar vocabulary using visuals, props, and examples
• asking questions to find out what learners remember or think about the topic or grammar point so they can start thinking about it
• enabling learners to anticipate content, facilitating comprehension
• explaining the purpose of the activity
• clarifying the learners' task

Examples

Before playing a song

1. share the title of the song and ask learners to guess what it will be about
2. ask true/false predictive questions based on students' guesses in #1
3. discuss the topic and/or grammar focus of the song
4. show a picture that sets the scene
5. talk about the singer/musician and why he/she is important
6. look at some words and phrases form the lyrics to pre-teach key vocabulary
7. clarify what the listening task is

Before reading a story

1. set the scene with pictures
2. talk about the title and ask learners to predict what it will be about
3. administer a questionnaire to find out what learners think or know about the topic
4. generate some questions from learners related to the topic and revisit the questions after reading
5. ask true/false questions about the topic
6. do a word web, eliciting vocabulary from the students related to the topic
7. clarify the reading task, e.g. reading for the main idea, looking for specific information, reading to form an opinion
   

Best Practice: Modeling and Demonstrating New Vocabulary

Everyone loves vocabulary and it is a very important part of language learning, but it is easy to get carried away and teach too many new words in one lesson or confuse students with spontaneous explanations. Read on to learn more about best practices for teaching vocabulary.

How do you choose vocabulary to teach to students? Start with good activity and lesson objectives. Let the objectives guide your choices.

How do you explain the words? Concrete words can usually be explained by using props, realia, drawings, or a picture dictionary. Plan ahead so that you have the materials you need. Abstract words are more easily presented by giving examples. Good examples help students to infer meaning.

Let’s take, as an example, the word appropriate, a word that might be encountered in the intermediate level. Here are some examples that should help students infer meaning:
1) Ask students about movies they’ve seen. Then ask: Is this movie appropriate for children? Why or why not?
2) Is it appropriate to wear blue jeans to a job interview?
3) Is it appropriate to talk on your cell phone during class?
Now elicit examples from the group. If the students use the word correctly, you’ll know they understand it.

As part of your lesson planning

• think about the specific language (key words) that you want the learners to produce


• practice explaining those words in level-appropriate language


• gather visuals and props that show meaning


• think of examples that will help demonstrate meaning


• try to limit the number of new words to 10 (memory can only hold 6 to 10 new items).

What about additional words that students ask about during class? If the word isn’t relevant to the topic, you might decide to write it down and talk to the individual student about it later. If the word is useful to the whole group and relevant to the topic, think before you speak. Keep your examples simple. Use visuals if possible, or act it out. If you need to look it up in a student dictionary, take the time to do that. It’s better to wait and be clear, than provide an immediate and confusing answer!

For example, let’s say that the students ask you about the word scientist. It isn’t related to today’s lesson. You could answer that a scientist is a job.

Best Practice: Minimizing Teacher Talk and Maximizing Comprehension

Minimizing teacher talk means not only limiting the number of words you use, but also thinking about which words you use. Here are some speaking tips to aid in communicating with your learners:

*Use gestures, mime and facial expressions to help clarify meaning.
*Use picture dictionaries, realia and visuals whenever possible.
*Slow down, but don’t talk down to your students.
*Enunciate, so learners are able to distinguish where one word ends and the next one begins.
*Use fewer reductions, especially with beginning level learners. Examples of reductions are: didja (did you), arentcha (aren’t you), gonna, wanna, etc.
*Avoid idioms. Have you ever realized how many idioms in American English come from sports?!
*Avoid slang. Monitor your choice of words. Is this something I’d say to my grandmother? If so, then it’s probably acceptable.
*Use simple words whenever possible, for example, “give me your papers” instead of “hand in your papers”. Multi-word verbs are more difficult for beginners to understand.
*Be prepared to repeat and rephrase what you just said. Use synonyms and/or define new words.

The above points come from a series of online presentations, designed to help native speakers of English communicate better with international students. To listen to them all, go to:
http://cybertower.cornell.edu/
1. click Cybertower
2. click Go underneath Study Rooms
3. scroll down and click on Watch Your Language: Improving Communication with Non-Native Speakers
4. click on a video title on the left and enjoy (the video may not work, but the audio is clear and easy to follow).

Do you struggle with minimizing teacher talk? At what point in the lesson is it the most difficult to reduce your teacher talk time? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Encouraging Learners to Check their own Work

By providing opportunities for learners to correct their own work, tutors and teachers can create an environment that encourages students to take more responsibility for their own learning. Here are some examples of ways you can do this:

1) Snowballing
The tutor or teacher corrects the work of the first student to finish. That student then helps another student make corrections. Those two students continue to help others, and so forth. When a learner comes to you for corrections, you simply say, “Go ask Victor. He has the answers.”

2) After completing an assignment, ask students to write their answers on the board. Ask “Who wants to do #1?” and hold out a marker to the first volunteer. Since students seem to be more comfortable working at the board in small groups, call up 4 or 5 at a time. Then look at the answers together and ask everyone if they agree with what is written. Correct any errors together. This works well with student-led dictations, too, where students take turns reading the sentences to their classmates, then correcting their work by writing the sentences on the board.

3) If you’re running out of time, write the answers on the board yourself and ask students to correct their own work.

4) Collect students’ work and choose a few examples to write on the board. Correct them together. Pass the papers back out to the students and give them time to correct their own work.

Focused Error Correction

When thinking about error correction, consider the following: How can I help learners self-correct?

A good rule to follow is: Don’t do the corrections for your students!

Help learners notice the error. Once the learner notices, he or she may self-correct if the form is the focus of the lesson and the learner is ready for the correction. Remember that heavy correction is premature when you are just introducing new language. During activities that focus on accuracy, correction is helpful.

Example A: During an oral practice activity with the irregular past tense:

Student speaking: Yesterday I go to the store.

Teacher/tutor: Yesterday I…? (uses a nonverbal cue, like a questioning look, or a gesture to signify past tense).

S: Yesterday I no go to the store?

T: Try again. Yesterday I _____ to the store. (T emphasizes “yesterday” and hums where the word should be).
Note: If the learner continues to struggle, ask others if they can help. If someone knows the correct form, model it, ask the original learner to produce it. Then let them know they have it right. Ask them to produce it one more time. If a learner isn’t able to make the correction, then he or she probably isn’t ready for it. Let it go, but make a note that this is an area that needs more work for that student.

Example B: For recurrent errors, like the “S” in third person, hold up a big “S” or make a sign for the wall that you can point to. All you need to do is point to the sign or hold it up as a reminder. Repeat up to the point where the learner made the error and let them “fill in the blank.”

Example C: Write the student’s incorrect sentence on the board with a blank in place of the error. Give them a questioning look or ask them what’s missing. Or, if there are examples on the board, point to the correct form.

Example D: You are moving around the room, helping students individually as they complete a worksheet. Fadumo has finished, but 2 of her answers are wrong.

T: Fadumo, you did a great job. 10 of your answers are correct! Now look at numbers 7 and 12 again.

Note: Sometimes you can give a hint. “There are 2 words missing” or “Think about the tense. It says ‘yesterday’. Is that past tense or present tense?” You can also help by pointing out other key words that give clues.

Did you try these suggestions? Were they effective? Please share by making a comment below.

Best Practice: I do it, We do it, You do it!

Whether you are planning an activity or a whole lesson, here’s a simple and effective way to organize it.

I. I do it

“I” represents the teacher or tutor and includes any or all of the following:
-explaining why you are doing the activity/learning the skill
-creating context
-introducing new language or teaching key vocabulary
-activating learners’ prior knowledge
-giving examples and/or modeling to show learners what you want them to do
-using visuals and realia to aid comprehension
The teacher plays a major role in this step and the learners have a more passive role. We sometimes call these “controlled activities”

II. We do it

“We” means the teacher/tutor and learners are practicing together, or learners are working on structured (controlled) activities, with lots of teacher support, as they practice the new language or skill in multiple ways. Examples of “we do it” would be:
-worksheets
-drills
-speaking activities like role plays where tutor initially plays one of the roles
-cloze (fill in the blank) activities
-reading out loud as a class

III. You do it

“You” represents the learners. They are now practicing on their own, applying what they’ve just practiced, as the teacher moves among them, observing and providing assistance as needed. These are called free practice activities and tend to be more authentic or “real life” situations.
-interviews
-dialogue journals
-mingles
-projects
-role plays
-games

Progression within lessons and activities generally follows this pattern, from more controlled to less controlled, so keep this formula in mind when you plan: I do it, we do it, you do it! You’ll see some tutor tips in the coming year that follow this format, too.

A quick example:
I. I do it: T models a short dialogue using a picture, props, gestures, etc.
II. We do it: Learners repeat after T, one line a time, with multiple opportunities to repeat
III. You do it: Learners practice dialogue in pairs, while T observes and assists