Most foreigners living in Mexico have been asked the following question by one of the local people: “Do you have a little time to help me practice my English conversation?”
To some English speakers, the mere thought of playing the role of a teacher produces a queasy feeling in the stomach: “Me teach English?” I can barely speak it myself and I had a heck of a time with the subject when I was in high school.”
If that’s you, think about this: Even though you may not know the difference between an adverb and an Advil, you have functioned as an English speaker most of your life and you have a sense of what sounds right and what sounds wrong in English, a sense which non-speakers of the language lack. It is exactly this ability of yours which can immensely benefit a Mexican trying to improve his or her conversational skills.
For example, imagine you hear this sentence: “Yesterday I go to Chapala.” You know exactly which word is “wrong.” Now, you could tell the Spanish speaker: “No, no, it should be ‘I went to Chapala.’”
This is a correction, the traditional tactic used by teachers all around the world, but actually not very useful because it doesn’t stimulate the student to think. Instead of doing that, you can really help the student by saying, “Something’s wrong with your sentence. Say that again: Yesterday I …”
Ninety percent of the time, the non-native speaker of English – because of his or her previous studies – will correct the mistake without any help and will say: “Yesterday I went to Chapala.” This simple technique aims at self-correction. It requires you to pay close attention to what the student says, practice self-restraint instead of blurting out corrections and, finally, to stop the students’ flow of speech, indicating where he or she needs to use a different word or perhaps change pronunciation. In time, this Self-Correction Technique will help students form the habit of looking at and working on their own speech, a valuable tool that will enable them to make giant strides in any foreign language they study.Of course, if the student has no clue as to what’s wrong with that sentence, you will give him or her the word “went” which you should immediately jot down on a sheet of paper for later inclusion on the list of expressions this student will need to practice in future sessions.
You can also use writing to help a student correct himself. If he says, “She can to play the piano,” you might write: She can ______ and ask him to repeat his sentence. Once again, you are indicating where the mistake lies in the sentence and inviting the student to try correcting it.
At this point you may be asking yourself, “What do I care if the student makes mistakes? She’s practicing English and that’s all that counts.” Well, without feedback, your student will almost certainly end up like Dr. Park, a Korean woman I know who went off to Australia, never got feedback (because she was a doctor) and who eventually became fluent in bad English, massacring the language at high speed for the rest of her life. Her situation, however, can easily be avoided, simply by giving students what they need: feedback.
During the course of a one-hour session, you will probably jot down a lot of expressions the student didn’t know as well as numerous words he or she mispronounced. Once the session is over, your job is to recopy the most useful of these words onto an ever-growing wordlist which you can later use to create word games in which your student will reuse these expressions again and again until they eventually become part of his or her vocabulary. We’ll take a look at how to do this in a future article.
If you encourage your students to self-correct on a regular basis, you will help them immensely by acting as a mirror and giving them feedback, the single most essential thing they need for conquering a foreign language.