Presentation Report: Mistakes and Correction

Here is the sample of Presentation report .It is compulsory for TEFL students to give presentation reports .This presentation report will surely guide you how to give presentations .The topic of report is Mistakes and Correction . This article will also help you to understand what mistakes and corrections are.

PRESENTAION REPORT:
MISTAKES AND CORRECTIONS;

We had been given Mistakes and Correction by Jullan Edge. The topic was divided between students  and was worked upon in a couple of days. Charts were made, in which keys points were mentioned with diagrams in order to make it clear to students.

On May 12, 2014, the topic was presented to the students. The ice had been broken by Safia  who gave an introduction of Mistakes, her topic was:

MISTAKES OF MEANING AND MISTAKES OF FORM:

She included following points:

·         Most people agree that making mistakes is a part of learning. Most people also agree that correction is a part of teaching. If making mistakes is a part of learning, and correction is a part of teaching, how do the two of them go together?

The question was answered with examples and activities.

·         The most important sort of mistake is a mistake that leads to a misunderstanding.

Students were kept engaged in reading from book also in order to keep association between the book and the teacher’s view points. Questions were made. And students were asked to answer them.

Consideration was made on two sorts of mistakes.

·         The mistake that occurs when a speaker uses a correct piece of language (linguistic form) that doesn’t mean what the speaker wanted to mean;

·         The mistake which occurs when the speaker uses a correct linguistic form which is socially unacceptable – the big problem here being one of politeness.

As teacher, we can learn:

·         Not to rush into correction before we know what someone wants to mean, and

·         To think about politeness as well as corrections.

We have also seen that meaning and communication are affected by mistakes of language form.

Followed by Mistakes of forms;

When we talk about mistakes of form, we are comparing something in the student’s English with Standard English. For example, if a student says,

I am come yesterday.

We would probably compare that with the standard form and correct it as

And call it a mistake:

I came yesterday

The causes of mistakes were discussed.

·         One cause of mistake in speaking a foreign language is the influence of the speaker’s first language.

·         A second cause of mistake is when learners think they know a rule, but in fact they don’t know quite enough.

·         Thirdly, people may say things that they know are not correct, because this is still their best chance of getting their message across. This is another intelligent use of knowledge about English in order to communicate in English.

·         Fourthly, mistakes can happen because someone is in a hurry, or tired, or thinking about something else

.

We can divide linguistic mistakes, into;

·         Slips, which a student can self-correct;

·         Errors, which a student can’t self-correct, but where it is clear which form the student wanted to use, and where the class is familiar with that form;

·         Attempts, where students have no real idea how to structure what they want to mean, or where meaning and structure intended are not clear to the teacher.

The students were given an activity to find out mistakes in a paragraph. The topic was preceded by Musfira

WHAT IS THE IMORTANCE OF MISTAKES? WHAT IS ACCURACY AND FLUENCY?

THE IMPORTANE OF MISTAKES:

Practical work:

She gave practical work to students in order to show them that mistakes should be considered as learning steps.

Write down at least three sentences about mistakes? Each sentence must contain a word “mistake”.

Then she asked them that what is the difference between “learning steps” and “mistakes”? Students replied that “mistakes” are generally considered as “failure” or a problem that should be corrected immediately while “learning steps” shows growth in learning.

Then she told them to:

Replace the word “mistakes” with “learning steps”.

 She asked one of the students to read out her sentences.  She told them how each sentence presents a complete different picture e.g. they made the sentence:

My students make a lot of mistakes

My students make a lot of “learning steps”.

She concluded her practical work by saying that main aim of this practical work is to change your perspective about mistakes. Mistakes actually are ‘learning steps’ and they signal the growth of learning.

Mistakes are Learning steps

                WHAT SLA THEORIES SAY ABOUT IMORTANCE OF MISTAKES:

 She asked students about second language acquisition (SLA) theories. She told them that they already have read some of the theories in psycholinguistics e.g. behaviorism, universal grammar theory, and nativist theory etc

When they told her about SLA theories she told them about “Krashen’s five hypotheses”. She told them that his theories are well accepted and his most of the study was on bilingual language acquisition. His theories had a great impact on SLA and teaching field since the 1980s.

Krashen theory consists of five hypotheses which are the Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis, The Monitor Hypothesis, The Natural Order Hypothesis, The Input Hypothesis and the Affective Filter Hypothesis. She only explained two theories “Acquisition- Learning Hypothesis” and “Monitor Hypothesis “because they were related to her topic.

ACQUISITION – LEARNING HYPOTHESIS:

She related importance of mistakes with Acquisition –Learning Hypothesis. Krashen differentiated between acquisition and learning. According to him acquisition is “unconscious process” while learning is a “conscious effort” .Krashen said that adults can also acquire second language just like children.

By the help of chart she told them:

What is acquisition	What is learning
Learner makes mistakes. It is an unconscious process.	This is conscious effort learners are not allowed to make mistakes.
Focus is not on grammatical correction or linguistic form of the language	Students have knowledge of grammatical forms and they are conscious about grammatical mistakes
Focus on  communicative function of language
No correction. Mistakes are appreciated.	Mistakes are considered as failure.
Focus on fluency of language.	Focus on accuracy.

   She told my students that as a student of TEFL they should know their job as a teacher. They should make their students to acquire language, not learn language. They should not correct their students at every step if they are using ungrammatical forms. Their students should have new experience of language. They should be risk takers. As a teacher their job is not to discourage “learning steps” in students. If they are saying “sister-husband” instead of “brother-in-law” then they should not be discouraged. They will acquire language only if they will make mistakes just like a child makes a mistake while learning mother tongue.

WHAT IS FLUENCY?
She asked her students what is fluency. When no one was able to answer correctly she told them fluency is

·         More attention on communicative function of language

·         Less focus on grammatical correction of language

EXAMPLE:  She incorporated an example to make them understand what fluency is?

With the help of chart she explained following example:

She asked students whether the teacher is appreciating fluency or discouraging fluency in the students.QUESTION:

The students replied the teacher is appreciating fluency. She told them again that in fluency the focus is not on grammatical form of the language. The students corrected themselves and said that the teacher is discouraging fluency in the students.

KRASHEN MONITOR HYPOTHESIS:

She told students about Krashen Monitor Hypothesis. This hypothesis was related to fluency of language so she also incorporated this hypothesis in her presentation. He said in his hypothesis that whenever an individual say or write anything he/she correct edit or plan it.

            According to him this correction or monitoring should be of appropriate level. If the person correct or monitor himself so much then he cannot speak a language with fluency and it also depicts that a person lacks self confidence. It is jab of a teacher to make his students optimal user of monitor.

WHAT IS ACCURACY?

 She told her students that accuracy is just the opposite of fluency.

·         Students are corrected whenever they make a mistake.

·         The focus is on linguistic form of language.

She told them that our teachers also demand accuracy in examination. The correction should be positive not criticism or punishment.

ROLE OF A TEACHER

She sum up her presentation by telling them what can be a role of teacher regarding mistakes, fluency and accuracy.

By the help of chart I told them:

REWARD TO THE STUDENTS WHO ANSWER CORRECTLY:

At the end of presentation she asked several questions and gave chocolate to the students who gave correct answers.

The topic was preceded by  issma

CORRECTION AND ACCURACY IN SPOKEN ENGLISH

Teacher would agree that spoken accuracy is most important for learners when they are practicing carefully something that has just has been represented to them,

CORRECTING THE GRAMMAR

Following are some of examples of correcting grammar for example

1: Greenland is the large island in the world.

2: The (hot) place in the world is Dallol in Ethiopia.

3: The (large) ocean is a Pacific.

The first thing to remember is that the best form of correction is SELF-CORRECTION.

SELF-CORRECTION

Learner usually prefers to put their own mistake right rather than be corrected by someone. Self-correction is easier to remember, someone has put something right in his or own head. Particularly it is important to give a chance for self-correction. Mistake is what we have called Slip

Don’t correct the mistake yourself, but show that a mistake has been made.

You can do this by the expression on your face, or by making a sign with your hand, or by saying something such as Errr….,or Mmmm,’ or whatever comes naturally.

Then give the student a little time to recognize the mistake and correct it.

PEER CORRECTION

Peer correction is particularly useful in the case of what we called errors.

There are four types of peer correction

·         Firstly when a learner makes a mistake and another learner corrects it both learners are invoved in listening to and thinking about the language

·         Secondly teacher encourages learner to correct their mistakes so that teacher gets a lot of information about the student’s ability

·         Thirdly students become used to the idea that they can learn from the each other

·         Fourthly if students get used to the idea of peer correction without each other’s feelings

Two problems with peer correction

·         Firstly when teacher ask for peer correction from the whole class,it might be that always same two or three people want to reply

·         Secondly if students are not used to correcting each other, they may find it very difficult to change their habit

Teacher Correction

The more the students are involved in correction, the more they have to think about the language used in the classroom. Self correction and peer correction at first, the teacher can sometimes help by focusing attention on the place where the mistake occurs.

                          

As teacher says ‘in….vent….,’she holds up three fingers of one hand to show that the word has three syllables in it. she points to the first finger she says, ‘in’ and the second finger as she says, ‘vent’. As she points to the third finger, she pauses and looks questioningly at the class, hoping that someone will add the ‘ed’.

The topic was preceded by  Anchal

Correction and fluency in spoken English

As her topic statement was correction and fluency in English she started her presentation by giving an introduction of fluency in spoken English

 she told some tips to the students that how to be fluent in English language.

·         At first one should use it in real situation.

·         She told them to learn new phrases instead of new words. When ever come to meet to new word write it down in form of phrase and use it in daily language.

·         Must do practice of it because Fluency needs practice.

Difference between accuracy and Fluency:

There is a difference between fluency and accuracy.

She told them about the relation of fluency and accuracy with the help of charts.

DIFFERENCE IN ACCURACY AND FLUENCY

 

Then she has told them some rules to be fluent while using a language, these rules are below;

·         Student needs experience of uninterrupted, meaningful communication.

·         Student needs to feel that people are focusing on what they are saying rather than how they are saying.

·         Students should not focus on accuracy of language but he should focus on fluency.

·         To learn a language efficiently student should not focus on grammatical errors it will make him confuse.

·         Student should keep it in mind that mistakes are the path of learning.

·         Error and mistake gives student opportunity to learn more efficiently.

she elaborated the idea of learning from mistakes by showing some charts with quotations about making mistakes.

            

Then she told them about different techniques which a teacher can use to teach a language.

Delayed Correction:

When a student commits a mistake and teacher does not interrupt him at the spot and makes him correct at the end of the lecture that is called delayed correction.

When a teacher gives a student an opportunity to learn, to speak and to make mistakes without any fear and hesitation, student will learn more quickly.

But when there is a threat to student to be punished for making mistakes he will not learn. He will avoid speaking. He will never share his thoughts and ideas liberally.

In this method teacher gives student a little freedom to share his ideas or thoughts with whole class. She does not stop him by making mistakes. She notices the important and interesting mistakes and share them with class and correct them at the end.

Peer correction.

When a teacher gives an assignment to students and asks them to check each other mistakes in a positive way it is called peer correction.

Peer correction is done by class fellows or our fellow friends. Students check each other. It helps them to learn in a better way. It can be very helpful during pair and group working. We learn from our peers.

As shown in the figure;

Observer:

By using this technique students work in group of four or three. Three of them carry out the activity while fourth one listens and tries to note down some mistakes that the other makes. This student is the observer.

 Observer should do:

·         He should focus on group fellow mistakes.

·         He should Notice the errors and mistakes done by group fellow and note down them on a note book.

·         He should write down something that is incorrect and impolite.

·         He should Show those mistakes at the end.

Observer should not do:

·         He should not interrupt group fellows.

·         He should not try to catch every mistake.

·         He should not correct the other students in the group.

                                               

Advantages:

·                     Students are encouraged to make their own decisions.

·                     It makes them more responsible for their use of language.

·                     Observer reduces the amount of talk that goes on in the students’ own language.

Sensitivity:

We should make an important note there that peer correction needs to be handled sensitively. You do not want to highlight the fact that certain people in the class know less than everyone else. Be subtle when you use this technique.

Normal Conversation:

Student learns a language in a better way when he gets a chance to have a normal conversation.

The idea of correction is impossible in a conversation but there is something that a teacher can

do to help students in learning. Teacher should react normally to what a student say in actual

situation. Teacher should not correct them at the spot. He should avoid correcting some common

 mistakes that are not so important.

She summed up my presentation by telling the most important thing, which is a concept of not correcting all the time at the front of teacher’s mind. In order to bring fluency in language use, encouragement is more important than correction

In short we incorporated following ideas in our group

presentation:

·         we arrange the class in semi circle order so the students can interact with teachers and students easily (idea from interectionist theory of SLA)

·         We gave practical work to the students.

·         Asked questions and tried to involve students.

·         Gave chocolates to appreciate them ( idea from behaviorist perspective of SLA)

·         We used charts, posters to give references while teaching. These materials are helpful in providing extensive input to students.

·         We tried to explain our points with the help of examples.

·         Classroom was managed in semi-circular order so the student can interact freely.

·         We tried to create friendly environment in the classroom (idea from affective filter hypothesis)

·         We tried to give extra knowledge to the students which were not included in student’s text book.