EFL Learners' Mistakes

This blog is about how students fear making mistakes when learning languages and how to help them realise that it is perfectly natural to do so and will ultimately be beneficial for them.

Doctor’s Orders

You may wish to use the following metaphor; Doctors need to find out what’s wrong with a patient before a diagnosis can be given and treatment prescribed; well it’s the same with making mistakes for the teacher. It’s worth pointing out in the first lesson that it is a perfectly normal occurrence and that it will be in their interest to keep on making them. Another solid piece of advice at the beginning is that total immersion is the bee’s knees; by thinking, reading, listening, speaking and writing in English the idea would be to eventually think and even dream in the target language; hence fewer slips. Paying attention to what went wrong along the way is an important part of the learning process. With grammar, for example, noticing the gap in understanding between misconceptions versus solid theory and examples in context is the way to go. The noticing hypothesis was coined by Richard Schmidt in 1990 as part of second language acquisition (SLA). A common error would be I am working here for X years using the present continuous instead of have been, which is the present perfect continuous. The time-frame + consequence need to be there, the fact it’s a continuous action over time and a nice example relevant to the student(s). For example, you find out that student Y drives and you ask: How long have you been driving for? Then, you adapt the time-line and elicit the result, which may be that the subject is an experienced driver, depending on how long they've been driving. When students are able to recognise their own errors, it will pay dividends and is multi-functional as this can be utilised outside the classroom and even after a course finishes.

Fear Eats the Soul

Fear is a learner’s worst enemy just as stress is a killer and should be avoided at all costs. The psychological implications of feeling inadequate or even stupid can inhibit some from reaching their potential. Past traumatic experiences, suffering from anxiety and unrealistic expectations are a few of the issues that can get in the way of making the most of a language course. A personal approach can certainly help to create a safe learning environment and exchanging private information can help build trust and create rapport. Self-deprecating humour is a useful tool that can put them at ease and make light of things. By being honest and showing that you are human and make the odd blunder now and again may help; in fact it may be just what the doctor ordered. Moreover, you can remind them that people often, usually or tend to make these very errors; this can make a difference as they will not feel alone or as useless. Communication is vital as you need to know if there is something getting in the way of the learning process and you should be able to see if there are any warning signs. If your learners are unable to find the right words and get tongue tied, then try and persuade them that they should just try, without worrying about the consequences.

Error Correction Exercises

Recycling, we know, is good for the planet; well it’s also good for your student(s). As you jot down the incorrect word order, pronunciation problems, wrong verb tenses and more, you can correct them at the end of the task (i.e. about a completed vocab task) or right at the end of the lesson (speaking for fluency with accuracy as a secondary aim). Perhaps even better still, as a form of revision, is to create error correction exercises, which can be solely composed based on their own incorrect utterances, for example, or equally, taken from written work. Another take on this, is to reuse typical mistakes other students with the same L1 make. This adopts the test-teach-test approach or method, where the onus is on the acquired knowledge thus far, and the educator can step in if needed and prompt or fill in any gaps in knowledge after the task is finished, which is the opposite of the p-p-p paradigm, where teachers present, students practice and them produce. Each lesson pupils should jot down what these mistakes were, followed by the correct versions and, then, reread their notes to aid their revision. Here are a few other tasks and resources that can be useful teaching aids with errors in mind:

* Correction exercise – (different from students’ errors) the focus is on errors in a text or in sentences. Students can focus on elements of grammar or vocab. One example would be an email correction exercise where formality is given centre stage.

* Editing Code – introduce the code to students explaining symbols that will help them to correct each other’s written work. Useful with peer feedback and popular for EAP (English for Academic Purposes) at Universities.

* Pronunciation drills, which can focus on typical mistakes made by speakers of specific languages. Learner English by Michael Swan is a valuable resource for this.

* Useful Websites – Macmillan Online Dictionary is great for definitions, synonyms and a pronunciation button to avoid repetition and all kinds of misunderstandings regarding words. Last but no means least is British National Corpus, which helps learners see words in context when they’re not sure how to use a word.