102 Part II: Putting Your Lesson Together
That being said, the issues for TEFL teachers when it comes to correction,
boil down to these:
✓ Striking the right balance between accuracy and fluency.
✓ When to correct: immediately or later?
✓ The particular errors to correct.
✓ The techniques you use for giving correction.
The guidelines for dealing with the first three points all boil down to a set of
definitive rules:
✓ Accuracy and fluency: These should combine to make for good commu-
nication. If lack of accuracy hinders communication, the speaker doesn’t
achieve anything by carrying on.
✓ Good communication: When this takes place, correction can usually
wait. When communication is poor or non-existent, step in more quickly.
✓ Correcting errors: Errors related to the topic of the lesson and which
stop communication should receive the most attention.
I talk about correction techniques later in the chapter.
Judging accuracy, timing and value
On the subject of accuracy, most students want to get it right. This is one
of the key differences between people who just pick up a language as they
go along and those who actually study it. The fact that the student is in the
classroom at all means that accuracy is important to him to some degree. It
should therefore be important to you too.
Even though students may not achieve total accuracy, try for it at least in the
language area you’re practising in that particular lesson. This gives the student
something to aim for. It’s a bit like target practice. You need to identify the
target and actually aim for it. You hit it sometimes and miss at other times but
it’s clear to you when you miss and that you need to practise. When the arrow
misses the target you can still applaud the effort. Likewise, you need to encour-
age effort but make sure that the student knows when he has to work harder.
So, suppose that the lesson is about the present simple tense and your stu-
dent, John, says, ‘I am go to the shopping.’ You may want to interrupt him to
make the error, ‘ I am go’, the focus of attention because it indicates that the
he may not have grasped the information you just presented on the present
simple tense. However the meaning is fairly clear, especially if it occurs within
a more extended dialogue. So if you don’t stop him, John continues, ‘... and
there I buy vegetables because I don’t want meat.’ The benefit of allowing
