Look at these statements about correction of students' oral work. What do you think?
Advanced students need loads of correction, beginners hardly any. When you start to learn a language you need to be able to communicate imperfectly in lots of situations, not perfectly in a few. The teacher's job is to support learners as they blunder through a range of communicative scenarios, not badger them because they forget the third person -s. With advanced learners the opposite is usually the case.
The jury is out on the question of whether correcting students, however you do it, has any positive effect on their learning. There is some evidence, though, that time spent on correcting learners may be wasted.
Research into Second Language Acquisition has suggested that it may be that some language forms can be acquired more quickly through being given special attention while others may be acquired in the learners' own time, regardless of teacher attention. This helps explain, for example, why intermediate learners usually omit third person -s just like beginners, but often form questions with do correctly, unlike beginners.
There is little point correcting learners if they don't have a fairly immediate opportunity to redo whatever they were doing and get it right.
Learners need the opportunity for a proper rerun of the communication scenario in which they made the error, if they are to have any chance of integrating the correct form into their English. Whether the error was teacher-corrected, peer-corrected or self-corrected in the first place is of relatively minor importance.
Lots of learners and teachers think correction is important.
Is this because it helps them to learn and teach or helps them to feel like learners and teachers?
The problem with some learners is they don't make enough mistakes.
Accurate but minimal contributions in speaking activities are unlikely to benefit learning as much as inaccurate but extended participation. Learners can be hampered by their own inhibitions and attitudes to accuracy and errors, the teacher's attitude and behaviour (conscious or unconscious) to accuracy and errors or the restricted nature of the activities proposed by the teacher.
Teachers spend too much time focussing on what students do wrong at the expense of helping them to get things right.
When giving feedback to learners on their performance in speaking English, the emphasis for the teacher should be to discover what learners didn't say and help them say that, rather than pick the bones out of what they did say. This requires the use of activities which stretch learners appropriately and the teacher listening to what learners aren't saying. That's difficult. [18,74]
Correction slot pro-forma
Here is a sample correction slot pro-forma which has been filled in with some notes that a teacher took during a fluency activity for a pre-intermediate class of Spanish students:
Pronunciation
I go always to cinema
She have got a cat…
Does she can swim?
Swimming bath my fathers
“Comfortable”
“Bag”- said “Back”
intonation very flat (repeat some phrases with more pitch range)
Bodega
Ocio
Yo que se
I don't ever see my sister
Have you seen Minority Report?
Good pronunciation of AMAZING
Why use this pro-forma?
It helps teacher and students identify errors.
It helps you as a teacher to listen and give balanced feedback.
And how to use it ?
It has been divided into four sections. The first two, Grammar/Vocabulary and Pronunciation, are pretty evident and are what teachers look out for as 'mistakes' in most cases.
The third slot, L1, means the words that students used in their own language during the exercise. We believe that in a fluency-based activity, if a student can't find the right word in English, they should say it in their own language so as not to impede the flow. An attentive teacher (who also knows her students' L1) will make a quick note of it and bring it up later, eliciting the translation from the class. If you are teaching a multi-lingual class, you can still use this column. You don't have to know the translations. You can prompt the learners to come up with those. [19, 48]
The '#' column reminds us to include successful language in feedback. Too often in correction slots the emphasis is on what went wrong. Here the teacher can write down examples of good things that happened. This is especially true if the teacher notices that the students are using a recently taught structure or lexical item, or if they have pronounced something correctly that they had trouble with before.
Other suggestions
You can copy your filled-in version and hand it out to groups of students to save writing on the whiteboard. Or simply use it to help you note down language in an organized way.
You can fill out separate sheets for each group of students as you listen or even for each individual student (this would obviously work best with very small classes!). You can pass them round, have students correct their own, each others, whatever.
The advantage of using a set form is that by doing this, you keep an ongoing record of mistakes that can be stored and exploited for revision lessons, tests or as a filler for the end of a class. [20, 48]
2.5 Exercises for the Pronunciation of Plurals for English second language
One of the most difficult parts of learning to speak English is the correct pronunciation of plural nouns and verbs. Many of these words simply add a suffix such as "s," "es" or "ed" to the original word, and this can be challenging for many English as a Second Language, or ESL, students to pronounce. The key to improving pronunciation of plurals is consistent practice and correction combined with listening.
Plural Noun Pronunciation with S Sounds
Plural nouns will end in either "s" or "es," and can have an "s" or "z" sound. This exercise focuses on the "s" sound, which is used in nouns that end in an unvoiced consonant sound (e.g., ducks, tops, cats). Depending on the students' native language, the biggest problem with pronouncing these words correctly is the two consonants that follow one another, like the "k" and "s" sound at the end of "ducks." Many other languages consistently insert vowel sounds between consonant sounds, so "ks" might sound like "kuh-s" for some students. The key is to focus on flowing from one consonant sound to the next with no vowel insertion.
Write the words you wish to focus on for that day's lesson on the board. Underline the consonant ending (e.g., underline "ts" in "cats") and pronounce it for the students as if it is one sound. Have each student repeat the sound. For fun, have them equate the sound to a sound effect. For example, "ts" sounds like a cymbal on a drum set. Choose a rhythm like "1 2 3 rest," and have them make the sound around the room, keeping the rhythm. When the sound is comfortable, introduce more words that end with that sound until it becomes comfortable. [11,84]
Plural Noun Pronunciation with Z Sounds
If a noun ends in a voiced consonant sound, it will end with a "z" sound (e.g., chairs, beds, frogs). Use the previous exercise as a guideline for this one, but with a focus on the voiced z. To compare, have students place their hands on their throats. Make the "s" sound, feeling no vibration in the throat, then make the "z" sound, feeling the throat vibrate with voice. Explain that these words will use that "z" sound.
Choose words ending with a specific consonant like "d" or "g" that will require the "z" sound when pluralized. Follow the exercise above, creating a rhythm around the room with sounds like "gz," until there is no vowel sound in between the consonants. When the students are making the sound successfully, begin adding in the rest of the word.
Plural Verb Pronunciation
The problem with plural verbs is similar to plural nouns; while the ending contains a vowel ("ed") the "e" is often silent. Most students will be tempted to say "walk-eh-d" instead of "walk-d," for example. The important thing is to explain to the students that while the ending is spelled "e-d," it is usually not pronounced "ed." In fact, the "d" is usually pronounced more like a soft "t." For plural verbs, it's best to have the students practice saying first the singular verb, then the plural in rhythm. Too often, ESL students give up on pronouncing plural verbs because their ears can't hear the difference. For example, they say "Yesterday, I walk to the store," because when a native speaker says the sentence, they can't hear the "ed."
To correct this, have the students perform repetition exercises with both singular and plural verbs side by side. "I walk. I walked." Critical listening is essential for students before they can master the pronunciation, so speak and repeat constantly as a guide.
Below are tips for pronunciation activities you can do with your students, including links to printable resources and games and links to related web sites. Enjoy!
Poetry
Drama
Bingo
Contrastive stress
Pronunciation Partners
Humming
Pronuciation Scavenger Hunts
Poetry One interesting way to practice the rythmn or English, as well as such features as linking is to use poetry. One of the poetry web sites that we like is Academy of American Poets, which has a large collection of different poems, many with audio recordings made by the poet.
Walt Whitman's poetry has also worked well with my students. Try the Poetry of Walt Whitman web site.
A neat poetry web site which even includes audio is actually the page for English 88: Modern and Contemporary Poetry at University of Pennsylvania. Check out the Gertrude Stein and Wi lliam Carlos Williams. [12,74]
Holly is a big fan of Haiku. It is a good way to have your students practice the concept of syllable. Holly not only has students read Haiku, but also write them.
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