Learner mistakes

The dos and don’ts of error correction

Do	Tell Ss what they got right as well as what was wrong	Praise is very important for motivation and developing self-confidence
Don’t	Judge Ss by the errors they make	Errors are inevitable and integral part of learning, so there are no point in deciding that learners are “good” or “bad”
Don’t	Correct all mistakes during a fluency activity	If you do this you will interrupt the flow of activity. Only correct them if the error causes miscommunication
Do	Encourage Ss to correct themselves	This is a good habit – the more they can do this the less dependent on the teacher they will be and will help them to analyse and understand better
Don’t	Discourage Ss from correcting each other	Ss can learn a lot from each other. Ss are often able to explain things to each other in a way they understand better then when T explains