LANGUAGE SKILLS TEACHING (II) – 302

WEEK 6 – We all make mistakes – Teaching Speaking

Interlanguage is the first subject of Monday’s lesson. Interlanguage showed me what
I have never thought before, which I am not supposed to be a perfect speaker of English.
Interlanguage is a science that uses a language system which is neither L1 nor L2. It is a third
language, with its own grammer, its own lexion etc. In addition to this, we talked about how
the learners create their interlanguage. Language transfer (negative or positive),
overgeneralization (the phonetic level, the grammatic level, the lexicon level and the level of
discourse), and simplification are listed under the headline of interlanguage. Following, we
discussed the differences between mistake and error, and we talked about how we deal with
them.
What is the difference between them? A mistake is slip of the tongue. In fact,
learners know the correct one but they make mistake because of some reasons, i.e. lack of
attention, carelessness etc. On the other hand, errors show faulty or incomplete knowledge.
Inasmuch as there is differences between them, this means that there should be difference
in correcting them. Should the teacher correct students during the activity or after the
activity when they make a mistake or error? And how does the teacher do it? We talked
about some other options, but two things were spoken most. First, if the activity requires
fluency, the teacher should give delayed feedback. Second, if the activity necessitates
accuracy, then the teacher can correct the mistakes immediately. What is more, some other
practical ways of giving feedback on spoken errors or mistakes should be carried out, such as
giving time for self ot peer correction, using intonation, repetation giving alternatives, face
to face or written feedback and so on. It is not a requirement that all mistakes are corrected.
Some mistakes which are because of slipping of tongue, lack of attention, tiredness or
nervousness can be remained uncorrected. Lastly, we looked over ten situations in a
speaking classroom and try to analyse them in terms of error or mistake correction.