To Correct or Not To Correct… That is the Question!

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To
Correct or Not To Correct… That is the ESL Question!

Colleagues
teaching English as a Second Language—my specialty—often ask me "Should we
correct our students or should we not infer when they are finally
speaking?"
My
answer is simple, "Yes, we should always correct our students. We owe that
to them. They have the right to know if what they are saying is correct."
I believe that by correcting them in an ESL course, we will help them to avoid
embarrassment and even humiliation later on. So it is well worth it.
The
best way to correct

Of
course, you have to find a way to correct your students so they are not
bothered by your intervention. Ideally, they should repeat your corrections
immediately, as they go along, thus improving their speaking skills. Better
still they should also have some trace of their mistakes to avoid them in the
future.
Students
can be put off at the beginning when their teacher picks up all their
mistakes—especially if the latter are numerous. I also caution teachers against
correcting students speaking in front of the whole class—at least in the
beginning. This can unnerve them and they will undoubtedly not be able to say the
sentence correctly even when corrected. On the other hand, pair work or group
work can be the ideal time to walk around the room and discreetly correct the
students’ oral production.
Informing
students about correcting methods

To
avoid encountering opposition or creating embarrassment I explain to the
students at the beginning of a course that I work like a machine, i.e., I react
immediately to a mistake and correct it orally. They should realize that I am
simply doing my job, and I am in no way judging them as a person or condemning
their ideas. I am merely helping them to reformulate in correct English what
they are trying to say. I also tell them that if I say nothing it means their
English is correct, and this is gratifying to them. Once they understand the
purpose and the method I use, they welcome corrections.
Correcting
in one-to-one sessions

I
do a lot of tutorials, one-to-one sessions, where students give
presentations on a topic of their choice. Students love these sessions alone
with the teacher (during lab sessions), since there is no peer pressure and
they are free to choose the topics that really interest them. Some students
will at first respond to my correcting by saying ’sorry’ and then continuing. I
stop them and say, "You don’t need to say ‘sorry’. Just reformulate the
phrase correctly to show me you have understood the correction." Usually
they will make the same mistake once or twice again, but then suddenly the
third time they will say the expression correctly… with a big smile!
Leaving
a written trace

When
I have tutorials, I not only correct orally what the student is saying, but I
also write down the “incorrect phrasing” followed by the correct phrasing or
pronunciation, as the case may be. At the end of the tutorial I hand the corrections
to the student, who will add the corrections at the bottom of his/her typed
outline before submitting the finalized work to the Web Disk or printing it out
to place it in their private portfolio. Some students have really amazed me by
designing beautiful tables with all the mistakes underlined and the correct
formulations highlighted. Others have even added personal advice that I gave
them such as “I shouldn’t keep turning my pencil with my fingers, even if I
feel nervous”.
A
trick I use

The
trick to oral corrections is the technique I call ’under your breath
correcting’. While the student is speaking I intervene very discreetly like an
interpreter, almost whispering the correct usage. And I never explain the
correction. Most of the time the student knows why he or she made the
mistake—it just came out the wrong way. There is no need to insist on the
explanation. Once the students have started speaking quite fluently, I correct
them all the time—even if they are speaking in front of all the others giving a
formal presentation as they do after about 14 two-hour sessions. At this point
the mistakes tend to be rare, because the students have been training in the
audio language lab and because they have followed the instructions on the
worksheets (in the booklets) and are using the structures (i.e. chunks of
language) that we require.
Why I correct

I
always say to myself, "Why should the students who are listening to their
classmates be exposed to English that is incorrect?" I believe that
students can learn just as much by listening to other students speaking correct
English as by listening to me or to a recording. For this reason we help
students before they perform by giving them lengthy instructions and lists of
expressions they should use. We correct all the materials they plan to show
their classmates during the talk or use for the workshop. If they wish, I even
correct parts of the ’scripts’ they prepare of what they plan to say.
Mistakes
become fewer in number

After
about thirty hours of intensive class and lab work and another thirty hours
spent on written and oral assignments, their English is vastly improved. In
fact with this sort of training and correcting, their English just gets better
and better. Mistakes become fewer in number and less serious. As a result I
have to intervene very little while they are giving their talks in front of the
class. Most of the time I am silent, so they are full of smiles—they know their
English is correct! I can see the personal satisfaction on their faces. They
are beaming with self-confidence and self-esteem. So ’to correct or not to
correct’ is no longer a question in my mind.

Marianne Raynaud