Teach english new edition r

Mistakes, slips, errors and attempts
In language study phases such as those described in this chapter, students will not always 
use correct English. They will make mistakes, too, when writing or speaking more freely (as 
we shall see in Chapters 
8
and 9).
We can divide mistakes into three categories. 
Slips 
are mistakes which students can 
correct themselves, once the mistake has been pointed out to them. 
Errors 
are mistakes 
which they can’t correct themselves - and which, therefore, need explanation. 
Attempts
are mistakes that students make when they try to say something but do not yet know how 
to say it. The way we give feedback and correct such mistakes will be heavily influenced by 
which type we think the students are making.
There are many reasons why students m ight make mistakes, whichever kind of 
mistakes they are. Perhaps - especially in a study session - they haven’t quite grasped the 
new inform ation and so continue to make errors. Perhaps their own language gets in the 
way because the way English expresses an idea or uses a grammatical construction is either 
very different or tantalisingly similar to how it is done in their first language. As a result 
they m ight make a slip, produce a deeply ingrained error, or just rely on their first language 
when making an attempt. Japanese students frequently have trouble with article usage, 
for example; Germans have to get used to positioning the verb correctly; Turkish students 
have to deal with different sentence structure, while Arab students have to deal with a 
completely different written system. 
False friends 
(words that sound the same but have 
different meanings) can also cause trouble, especially for speakers of Romance languages 
which share a com m on heritage with English.
Another ‘problem ’ category is often described as