APPLIED LINGUISTICS for BA Students in English
FEEDBACK AND ERROR CORRECTION
Responding to oral errors
Fluency
The above techniques are appropriate during accuracy work, when grammatical correctness is the main focus. However, there are several occasions, when students are trying to use the language more freely and fluently for communication. The teacher has to encourage fluency, because this will allow learners to experience uninterrupted, meaningful communication. If students say something meaningful, they need to feel that what they are saying is more important than how they are saying it. The teacher has to accept that making mistakes in language use is necessary to language learning. That is why the teacher doesn’t correct linguistic mistakes immediately when students are involved in fluency practice unless the mistakes affect the communication. If this is the case, the teacher may want to correct, but correction should be ‘gentle’ (Harmer, 1991) Gentle correction means that the teacher does not want to seriously intervene and spoil the atmosphere of pair-work or freer conversation, so the teacher just indicates the student that a mistake has been made, gives the correct form but does not spend too much time on it and does not make the student repeat it.
Although in communicative activities students are allowed to use any language they like, it does not mean that the teacher cannot use any form of correction when fluency work is taking place. However, guidance and correction cannot be given during the activity, only afterwards. Edge (1990) suggests employing the technique of delayed correction. While the students are involved in communication activities in pairs or in small groups the teacher can monitor their performance by walking round making notes of the mistakes and errors, and after the activity give individual students notes with the errors they have made indicating the way of correction or discuss the errors with the class. If there are common mistakes, they can be written on the blackboard and corrected by the students. It might be necessary to have more practice in the given structure.
