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Thursday, November 27, 2014

The role of errors Unit 11


The role of error in the leaning process is important and useful especially in a foreign language. Here we have the mistakes that students commit during their language use and production. Mistakes are divided into two main subcategories that are: slips and errors.

Slips are produce because of tiredness, temporary emotions or worries, they are made because of the lack of concentration; these do not mean that the students do not know the language, and they are corrected by themselves once they recognize the slips. On the other hand, there are the errors which mainly occur because of the mother tongue influences or interferences in the target language production, students make assumptions according to the sound, lexis or grammar structures that seem to be similar to their L1. Other reason that teachers should take into account is the level of language that students have, this can cause that students start to commit developmental errors which are helpful during the process, a good example of this is the overgeneralization which means that students add a specific prefixes or suffixes on words like: played, goed, writed; this is known as interlanguage which means that students create their own version of the language. For this teacher has to be careful when, how and where is correct to correct mistake, because this can have a huge impact on students that can make them lose their confidence at all with the target language, that is why we have the reformulation and prompting, these help us to make the mistake correction softly for students.


In conclusion, teachers have to know when a mistake can be forgiven and when it has to be corrected in order to avoid the fossilization which can cause many problems to the students in higher levels.       

Here some links that can help you:

  • http://teflbootcamp.com/tefl-skills/correcting-errors-in-efl/
  • http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/well-balanced-use-error-correction.html
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b3tqm2LbYk
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znswuO4goYg

4 comments:

  1. Great!
    I found your links very explicit, they helped me figure out what type of techniques we should apply when correcting students. Bearing in mind the fact that, correction must be personal and such a respectful matter.

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    1. Thank you Anita I am pleased that ypu take the time to read my blog and visit the links of the extra information.

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  2. Awesome !

    I really appreciate that you explain better the concept about slips, which ones I have noticed that are common on middle levels, but also overgeneralization that from a different pint of view it shows the improvement on the learning process of the language.

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    1. I am pleased to read that you find interesting the way how I explain the difference between slips and errors
      Thanks

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