Preview

English as Foreign Language (Efl) Teaching and Learning at the Undergraduate Level: Treatment of Errors and Mistakes

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2333 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
English as Foreign Language (Efl) Teaching and Learning at the Undergraduate Level: Treatment of Errors and Mistakes
Background Human speech is very much complicated. It cannot be explained from any single source. The first sound a child makes on coming into the world is one of discomfort, it is a cry, a reflex action and the child does not expect a response. People first learn their native languages through making all kinds of errors and mistakes, and getting the necessary correction and help from their parents and teachers. The same thing happens when people are learning their foreign languages. In this research paper, I would like to discuss whether or not linguists believe that teachers should correct their students’ errors, and if so, what to correct, how to correct, and when to correct. It is very important for teachers to know and understand this information when they teach students because how they address these issues will have great impact on students’ language learning process.

Many people find these two words with similar meanings, but when we are talking about errors and mistakes in language learning, they are representing two different things. Mistake means that learners already know or understand the usage of the language, but unintentionally say or use it in the wrong form or way. However, learners will be able to notice it and self-correct it immediately, and this is called a mistake. On the other hand, the error means that learners use the wrong term, word, or form, and they are unable to recognize the problems. At this time, an error is made and it is needed for somebody to point it out to the learner to correct it.

It is interesting to see how error treatment has evolved all these years. Just a half century ago, when language teachers were enthusiastic about audio-lingual method, nobody had really considered or worried about error treatment. When using audio-lingual method, it came with different sets of dialogues; teachers only needed to guide students to practice all kinds of drills from the set dialogues, and did not need to think about



References: Bartram, M., & Walton, R. (1991). Correction: a positive approach to language mistakes. England: Language Teaching. Brown, H. D. (2000). Principles of language learning and teaching (4th ed.). New York: Addison Wesley Longman. Hanzeli, V. E. (1975). Learner’s language: Implications of recent research for foreign language instruction. The modern language journal, 59, 426-432. Hendrickson, J. M. (1978). Error correction in foreign language teaching: Recent theory, research, and practice. The modern language journal, 62, 387-398. Lyster, R., Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (1999). A response to Truscott’s “What’s wrong with oral grammar correction”, Canadian modern language review (Vol. 55, No. 4).

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Klapper, J (1998) Language Learning at School and University , Language Learning journal 18, p23-27…

    • 6976 Words
    • 24 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    celta task 6

    • 320 Words
    • 2 Pages

    It is imperative that a teacher has a sound understanding of the subject matter that is being delivered, if a student produces material or spoken language that is incorrect the teacher has to have the ability to not only give a correct version, but also to explain clearly and concisely to the student and class why the original material given by the student was incorrect, this is of course only possible if the teachers own knowledge is complete and accurate, the teacher should be able to provide an efficient and thorough explanation and deliver accurate guidance.…

    • 320 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Thirdly, when students of English as a foreign language write something, they have a big question in mind whether what they write is correct or incorrect. Who can answer the question for them and help them recognize the mistakes. It is, in many cases, the teacher who is teaching them and is ready to give them a hand. The problem however I want to mention is that the teacher does not have enough time to correct for all of them if there are more than ten students in the class. When the teacher corrects the writing for just some of them, the other students cannot recognize their own mistakes. Without correction, the mistakes may be repeated many times and become bad habits which are hard to adjust.…

    • 291 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Gatsby

    • 4799 Words
    • 20 Pages

    a relatively overall and objective analysis of the novel’s language from lexical and grammatical Category. As…

    • 4799 Words
    • 20 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Unit 11 The role of error

    • 1082 Words
    • 3 Pages

    This unit focuses on mistakes learners when they speak or write in English. Mistakes are often divided into errors and slips. Errors happen when learners try to say something that is beyond their current level of language processing. Usually, learners cannot correct errors themselves because they don’t understand what is wrong. Errors play a necessary and important part in language learning. Slips are the result of tiredness, worry or other temporary emotions or circumstances. These kind of mistakes can be corrected by learners once they realise they have made them.…

    • 1082 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The present study focuses on the way in which error correction is done and the significance of errors in the Romanian context. In designing it, I did not use my knowledge on causes of errors as I was not interested to find out whether it can be established a correlation between students’ mother tongue, the target language and the production of errors. I oriented this study towards a narrower issue: the attitudes of teachers, students and native speakers of Romanian towards error correction. In order to do this, I used the following classification of correction techniques: self – correction, peer correction and teacher correction.…

    • 2930 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Error Anaylsis

    • 3806 Words
    • 16 Pages

    • Error is a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker, reflects the competence of the learner…

    • 3806 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This experience made me rethink my ideas about language learning. I realized that learning to communicate in a new language was a lot like learning a musical instrument. You can’t learn to play the piano by just studying music theory. You have to put your fingers on the keyboard and practice until gradually you begin to play more smoothly. And just as in learning to play an instrument, making mistakes when you learn to speak and write a new language should be a natural part of the learning process. The idea is to practice and get better at playing the “melody,” which for language learners is the ability to communicate ideas. Perfection can come later.…

    • 376 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Esl Methods

    • 1500 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Although modern foreign language teaching has adopted completely new methods, the work of language professionals in the period between 1950 and 1980 contributed significantly to scientific views in the field of second language teaching and learning.…

    • 1500 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The study of modern foreign languages is pivotal to our interconnectivity with the rest of the world. For this reason, I would have liked my personal experience of learning a second language to have been slightly more stimulating. I believe, that the if the primary elements of the language learning theory had been outlined from the beginning of my education, subsequently the teaching of the key skills and my analysis of the language would have been a lot more straight-forward.…

    • 5844 Words
    • 24 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Corrective feedback is called any reaction from teachers to students’ “non-nativelike use of the target language” indications.(Kim, 2004)The approaches towards corrective feedback differ.Rezaei, Mozaffari&Hatef, 2011 summarize these approaches; some schools of thought like Behaviorism considered errors as taboos in their discourse and believed that theyshould be immediately corrected by the teacher (Brown, 2007; Larsen-Freeman, 2000; Richards &Rodgers, 2001)while others claimed that error correction was not only unnecessary, but also harmful to language learning(Krashen, 1981a;1981b). With the emergence of communicative approaches, error correction underwent aradical shift (Nicholas, Lightbown, &Spada, 2001; Russell, 2009). CLT advocates created a balance betweenwhat Audiolinguists and Cognitistvists do and suggested that an error must be viewed as evidence of learners 'linguistic development, not as a sin to be avoided. CLT advocates recognized the need for fluency and thisallows teachers to leave some errors uncorrected.Nevertheless, currently SLA researchers strongly believe…

    • 1870 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cited: Brown, H. D. (2000). Principles of Language Teaching and Learning. (4th Ed.). New York: Long man.…

    • 318 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Brown, H. Douglas. (2000). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching – 4th Edition. England: Longman.…

    • 2897 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Thirdly, when students of English as a foreign language write something, they have a big question in mind whether what they write is correct or incorrect. Who can answer the question for them and help them recognize the mistakes. It is, in many cases, the teacher who is teaching them and is ready to give them a hand. The problem however I want to mention is that the teacher does not have enough time to correct for all of them if there are more…

    • 423 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Atl Assignment

    • 2078 Words
    • 9 Pages

    References: Ellis, R. (1997): Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jain, M. P. (1974): "Error analysis: source, cause and significance", in J. Richards Error Analysis. Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition. Harlow, Essex: Longman.…

    • 2078 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays