Some thoughts on error correction

This is my first proper video post (although I did record some voice-overs for this post) and it was brought about by an article I read this morning.

 

Using phonemic symbols with (one-to-one) students

A couple of days after my blogpost about error correction in one-to-one lessons I had an interesting discussion on Facebook about using phonemic symbols with students.

It had never occurred to me that a teacher would be against it, but apparently that is the case. So I’ve decided to write about the reasons why I think using them is beneficial for students.

Error correction in one-to-one lessons

Error correction is something I have been thinking a lot about recently. This was partly motivated by Luiz Otávios plenary (which I wrote about here), but also because I have been observing lessons every week as a Celta tutor in training.

I have previously written about error correction in conversation lessons here and more in general here, so today I’m going to tackle it from the perspective of one-to-one lessons.

Teacher Development and Language Development

Last Friday I had the opportunity to take part in the first Braz-Tesol’s Teacher Development SIG event in São Paulo. I’m going to summarize the highlights of the workshops I attended and also share something I do in order to develop my English whenever I attend seminars or conferences.

If you don’t live in São Paulo, some of the same speaker will be at the Braz-tesol’s local chapter event in Goiania this Friday.

My bag of tricks

Today I’ve decided to open my bag of tricks, which is a small bag I used to take to my lessons when I taught at a language institute. Read below to find out what’s inside.

.

Conversation lessons and error correction

Last week I took part in my first BrELT Chat, the topic of which was conversation lessons. At the very end of the chat participants were asked to contribute a final thought and I said ‘aula de conversação também tem correção’ which translates to ‘there should be correction in conversation lessons’.

In a lot of ways, I think the same techniques can be used for error correction in both a conversation lesson and a ‘regular’ lesson. You can see some examples in my previous post on the same topic. What may change, however, is what I choose to correct, rather than how I correct it.

Some thoughts on Error Correction

I have recently become a Celta TiT (Tutor in Training) and something I have been thinking a lot about is error correction (or lack thereof). Aside from correcting students in the first place, there was something said during the course that I thought was particularly important: it makes a big difference if you involve students in the correction and give them a chance to use the target language after it has been corrected. What follows are two examples of how I dealt with mistakes in my lessons last semester.