Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition

Errors, Correction and Remedial Work
138
terms of its tolerability in the eyes of native speakers rather
than its linguistic correctness. It is very probable that native
speakers will tolerate lexical errors far more than grammatical
ones. But even within the area of the grammatical, there is
some uncertainty about what is acceptable and what is not. It
is very common to hear native speakers come out with:
‘It’s me.’
‘He does it better than me.’
‘He didn’t do nothing wrong.’
‘We was going to the City when…’
The educated native speaker would probably show more and
more unease as he heard a student produce these forms, since
he would not accept a non-native speaker using what he
would probably consider in the last two cases at least to be
sub-standard English. For similar reasons, it is necessary to
teach something close to RP pronunciation, not a strong
Geordie, London or West Country accent. The last three
would certainly be inappropriate for the learner in all but the
most exceptional circumstances, even though they are widely
used in England. So it is important to consider the social
tolerability of errors as well as the degree to which they
transgress the linguistic rules.
As a prior step to deciding on a remedial teaching strategy, it
is best to relate the error to the system of English and to its use,
allocating it to a level of the linguistic system (spelling,
morphology, syntax or lexis) or deciding if the problem is the
inappropriacy of a correct linguistic form in a communicative
situation, e.g. register. A systematic knowledge of English
grammar is vital here. For example, there is a misuse of a
preposition in the following extract from a written
composition: ‘The family were playing happily together on the
beach with a ball. Father threw it very gently at his young son,
who in turn threw it at his mother.’
The error lies in the preposition at instead of to. This is a
semantic rather than grammatical mistake, since the prepo-
sition at with verbs of action carries an idea of aggressiveness
which is totally foreign to the context. An explicit awareness of
the meaning of prepositions will allow the teacher to isolate the
main feature of the error and plan his teaching in such a way as
to make these differences clear to the learner.

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Errors, Correction and Remedial Work
139
Cases of inappropriacy of correct linguistic forms call for
a sensitivity to language in use. An instance of this is found in
the following extract from a dialogue. The task for an
advanced group was to write a dialogue between a Company
Director and his manager who had not come to work.
Company Director: Hello. This is Dr Robinson. I would like
to speak to Mr Garrard, please, on a
matter of great urgency. Is he available?
Mrs Garrard:
OK, hang on. I’ll get him.
Clearly the student had heard the expression ‘hang on’ but
had not realised it is informal in style. The problem posed for
the teacher is that of teaching the appropriate use of forms in
their social context.
The last step after establishing the area of error is its
correction. It hardly needs stating that the teacher must tread
very cautiously—everyone knows the feeling when a piece of
written work comes back covered with red ink, and many
students complain bitterly of their teacher correcting their
speech so often that they no longer dare open their mouth.
For even the best intentioned teacher, there is no easy way to
know how much to correct or how often. It is perhaps best to
consider this in relation to two factors: the sensitivity of the
student and the nature of the task. Some people are always
going to support correction (often construed as ‘criticism’)
less well than others. What a student will accept is very
variable, and clearly the teacher must exercise his personal
judgment.
Secondly, some exercises call for very different techniques
in correction, and these must not be used in the wrong place.
When listening for accurate pronunciation of sounds and
supra-segmentals, it is legitimate to pick up even quite small
deviations from the norm, and do this fairly regularly. It will
be clear to the student that this intensive listening,
production and correction procedure can only be maximally
helpful when there is precise and regular review of his efforts.
But this technique would be quite inappropriate where the
aim of the exercise was oral fluency, for instance. To stop a
student giving a two minute impromptu talk because of a
wrong pronunciation of a phoneme, even repeated
mispronunciation of it, would be quite at variance with the

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