By Olga Kozar
English-by-Skype coordinator

 The goal – simply share my thoughts
 I don’t have the “ right” answers
 I hope this presentation will raise your
awareness of some issues in error correction
and will encourage you ask / answer some
questions

 How do we deal with students’ mistakes?
 WHAT should we correct?
 HOW should we do it ?
 WHEN should we make the corrections?

 Grammar?
 Pronunciation?
 “ Russian” English?
 The sentence stress?
 Verbs? Tenses? The 3rd person “ s”
 Prepositions?
 Only frequent mistakes?
 …
 All of them? ?? !

 Explicit corrections ?
 Reformulating what they said?
 Asking for clarifications?
 Giving them tips?
 Pinpointing ?
 It is a __( blank) ..?
 Cues? Signs?
 HOW?

 Immediately?
 After a phrase?
 ___ a sentence?
 ___ the end of the “ idea block”?
 At the end of the lesson?
 Every 5-7 minutes?
 WHEN?

There seem to be 2 main
options:
Trying to correct everything, or as much as we
can
Or
“ Selective” corrections
Interesting fact:
the research shows that there is a discrepancy between
students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the RIGHT way to

Opinion polls reveal that :
Most teachers prefer ( a) ___corrections while
most students would rather be corrected (b)
___
Answers:
Teachers – selective corrections
Students – would like all their mistakes to be corrected

FOR AGAINST
Students often:
Helps to prevent “
fossilization “ of  Feel helpless and
mistakes overwhelmed by the
number of mistakes
A teacher “ is not doing
 Start using shorter
his/ her job well unless
and simpler sentences
they correct
everything”
 Lose motivation and
enjoy the process

selective approach poses a question:
How do we choose what to correct?
To answer this question , let s consider the goal of
using the language
It is effective communication
That s why the main criteria in error correction
should be “ does this mistake cause the
communication breakdown? “

 If a mistake:
 Distorts the meaning
 Prevents understanding
 Impairs communication
 Can cause tensions/ irritations/ makes a
student sound rude/ impolite…
 We should definitely correct them