This just in from Bryce:
So why don’t we spend more time correcting the errors in our students’ speech and writing? Isn’t that what teachers are supposed to do? Isn’t that their job? Well…. NO! A teacher’s main job is to teach the students, and that is done by engaging them. We try to use interesting, comprehensible, personalized language. When we do that, students are compelled to learn the language. We do not need to correct them every time they make a mistake. And there is research to back up this idea.
Error correction is not effective. It interrupts communication, makes students more self-conscious, and can damage the student-teacher relationship. Besides, students do not pay attention to it. They learn language when they are engaged in conversations that focus on meaning rather than on form.
Studies by Stephen Pinker, a well-known expert on language acquisition at M.I.T., support the idea that error correction is not a factor in first language development:
“…attempts to show that parents correct their children’s deviant sentences, or even react differently to them, have turned up little. Parents are far more concerned with the meaning of children’s speech than its form, and when they do try to correct the children, the children pay little heed.”
(Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought, Viking, 2007, p. 39; underlining mine)
My students usually do the same thing—they pay me little heed when I attempt to correct them. And the more I try to correct them, the more I lose them.
Ah, but when we are actually communicating about something interesting, magic happens. They learn almost effortlessly. They wind up saying it right, but they don’t know exactly why.
Bryce