How much should you correct?

Decide priorities.
Choose a method of correction.
Devise follow-up work for both the class and individuals.

1. Lesser but often irritating errors -

o wrong tense

o non-agreement

o word order

o articles omitted or misused

o spelling mistakes

o punctuation

2. Stylistic errors - inappropriate style formal/informal, wrong register.

Samples of students' writing:

1. Poor grammar: I has driven to London shopping. In the afternoon I come back, and I've eaten anything, after this I went tio a pub. At 11 o'clock I went home in my bed.

2. Poor graphical skills - letters aren't vertical enough: He coming from Airport Hintero by Train to Prighton From ppighton to my flat by taxi I have flat near school. I walking from my flat to school.

3. Poor spelling & punctuation - I give you Some instrustions how to get to my adreas or my place You can comeing from heathrou airport to victory station buy anderGraon and after you can comeing by trian to Hove.

4. Direct translation - I'm very pleasant for me that you spend some days with me in my town, but you needn't go to a hotel, I think is much better that you go to my house. The form easier to get there is that you take a taxi, and indicate my address.

A positive correction strategy firstly depends on the approach or approaches which underlie the planning of the programme.

How to correct or earmark a mistake:

1. Pure repetition of the right answer = the behaviourist's way, but does not encourage students to think about the meaning of the utterance they have incorrectly made.

2. Reference to a picture provides a good context for correcting lexis.

3. spatial relations - time lines using the whiteboard or OHP.

4. Clocks with moveable hands

5. Cuisenaire rods, systematically used to prompt the insertion or omission of auxiliary verbs, concord, use of articles, countable and uncountable nouns

6. Facial gestures, counting on fingers, arm movements, hand signals, mime, use of nearby furniture (e.g. "on" "under" "in") and visual aids all contribute to this inventory of correctives.

In many ways, the use of the above as correctives shadows their use in the presentation phase. This time the visual aids act as memory joggers and the students remember the correct linguistic forms associated with them.

There are also linguistic correction techniques:

1. Long utterances can be broken down into phrases, words and syllables through backchaining or frontchaining. They are then resynthesized.

2. Asking the student's peer something similar and then return to the student.

For positive correction of written work at these levels, it is necessary to recognise what is good as well as what is bad. For example, at the intemediate level, real beginnings in connected writing, a few compound sentences etc) would be worthy of praise.

At the elementary level, correct transformations, subject verb agreements, the correct choice of present tense and even correct copying could be earmarked as "good".

Use a correction scheme and illustrate it by getting students to proof-read faulty scripts.

For positive correction organised records on the part of both teacher & students are desirable. Provide all learners with a (written) KEY to the scheme before you set assignments which are to be corrected. Do not tell them about it retrospectively, as they will see you as someone who is always 'changing the goalposts'.

Adopt a correction scheme and illustrate it by getting students to do some correcting of a sample of work illustrating:

1. poor selection

2. incorrect word order

3. unnecessary addition

4. omission

5. grammatical mistake

6. poor punctuation

7. spelling mistake

Avoid the trap of using corrections of students' written work as the basis of a monologue which becomes all too large a part of their next lesson.

Critical ability on the students' part is probably better developed through self-correction and discussion in pairs or small groups and through comparison of two or more pieces of writing.

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