106 Part II: Putting Your Lesson Together
Leading to Self Correction
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed
him for a lifetime.
— Chinese proverb
According to the proverb, there’s wisdom in allowing people to fend for them-
selves once you explain how. This works in TEFL too. Students remember
the answers they work out for themselves better than the ones you tell them
explicitly. So if you always say ‘not x but y’ your students may lack the skills
to correct themselves when you aren’t there.
After trying to help students correct themselves, and if they still don’t get
it, tell them the answer and make sure that they understand any principal
involved. It becomes exasperating if the correction process is drawn out for
too long a time.
Progressing by prompting
Of course you can’t always wait for students to fathom things all by them-
selves, so instead you give them clues and prompts to help them get there. In
addition to the largely non-verbal techniques in the previous section, you can
also help students in these ways:
✓ Tell the student which part of speech or tense they need. For example:
- I came in the bus: Preposition.
- I am here since 2008: Change the tense with ‘since’.
- I am eating many bread: Uncountable or countable.
✓ Elicit the correct language by asking leading questions.
- Student: I told the host that I didn’t like tomatoes because they’re
disgusting.
- Teacher: People have different likes and dislikes, don’t they? Lots
of people love tomatoes. Can you tell me an expression that’s quite
polite but means you don’t like something?
- Student: Is it not nice?
- Teacher: That’s not quite right. I’m thinking of an expression that
means it’s OK but not good for me.
- Student: Is it not my cup of tea?
- Teacher: Well done! Could you repeat your sentence now please?
