What to do when students commit mistakes.

    Most people have different experiences of how they were corrected by teachers when they made mistakes. I think that it depends on the generation they grew up. For example, in 1950s, students used to be punished for committing the repeated mistakes, though they were re-teaching no to commit the same mistake. It was because teachers had the idea that mistakes were caused by the failure of their teaching. Thus, they felt frustrated and released the angry against the students. I think that it continued through the next decades (the 1970s, 1980s). Obviously, things changed a lot nowadays. Well, in this opportunity we are going to see how to react when students commit mistakes, keeping in mind that too much mistake correction could frustrate students or overwhelm students’ motivation and interest of learning the new language. These are some suggestions we could use in the classroom.

Different Generations, different Experiences

   There is an interesting technique called gentle-correction. For instance, certain symbols are always used to indicate what kind of mistakes learners make. The purpose of marking in this way is to help students to realize their mistakes consciously. Likewise, when teacher uses red marks between lines and on margins, I think  it's a good idea to use  other colors of pens. As you can see it brings you to the next technique.

Students realize their mistakes consciously.

Try not to use red pens when you correct students' texts

   Here is where self-correction appears. Self-correction is the ability to correct oneself when a mistake has been pointed out by teachers or peers. For instance, when students get their homework, after they were corrected, teacher asks to do self-correction basing on the indications in a given time. It’s very helpful if the teacher sorts and registers the common mistakes that students commit in a kind of correcting process.

Self-correction basing on the indications in a given time.

   Now we have peer-correction. It’s when teacher indicates something is wrong and elicits from another learner a model of the acceptable version.

Peer-correction helps students to interact each other.

   By way of conclusion, these techniques can help us a lot when students commit mistakes. In some way, we do not indicate the students’ mistakes directly. I think it will let students to be willing to learning process.

  

Chants

   Who doesn’t like to listen to music or make a loud noise in the stadium shouting: “Go! Go! Go!”

             

   What about a simple text spoken over a background of rhythm or music. Actually, it’s a definition of a chant. I do not have the opportunity to use it in class, but it can be really useful, why? 

A class with rhythm or music makes fun!

  According to PS Morgan (Dreaminenglish.wordpress.com), music always energizes students, and students have to pronounce the words in a rhythm. Furthermore, chants could help a lot to students when they have to remember some teaching points that are difficult, longer, etc. Besides, I think that all of us can teach what we want using chants. Why don’t we see one chant to exemplify these points of views:

                          Color Chant  (By Dr. Jean Feldman)

If you're wearing RED
Put your hands on your head.

If you're wearing BLACK,
Then touch your back.

If you're wearing BROWN,
Touch the ground.

If you're wearing GREEN,
Wash your hands real clean.

If you're wearing BLUE,
Put your hands on your shoe.

If you're wearing PINK,
Then think and think.

If you're wearing GRAY,
Have a nice day.

If ORANGE is what you wear,
Then touch your hair.

If you're wearing WHITE,
Squeeze your hands real tight.

If you're wearing PURPLE,
Say, "Murple gurple."

If you're wearing YELLOW,
Wave to your fellow.

You're all looking mighty fine,
And that's the end of the color rhyme!

 Students love music & rhythm

   I think you notice what I mean, chants help a lot, and in this case there are a lot of colors, parts of body, verbs, nouns, etc. that students will use all the time. So depending on what the teaching points are, chants would be really useful tools. Of course, they take time to create them, but the results will be great. I hope you could find this post useful.