The first thing to decide is if someone has made a mistake or an error. But they're synonyms, you might say, there's no difference between them. Well, for us English teachers they are very different things. A mistake, for us, is when you know the correct form but for some reason you don't produce it properly on isolated occasions - we'll talk about those reasons a little later. An error is when you don't know the correct form, or you haven't learned it yet - these normally cause communication problems. Let's look at the two types individually after the jump.
Mistakes
One expert says this: "A mistake refers to a performance error that is either a random guess or a 'slip', in that it is a failure to utilize a known system correctly. Mistakes, when attention is called to them, can be self-corrected". (Brown, H. D. (2007). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. (5th ed.). New York: Longman)These types of mistakes can be caused by you being tired, thinking about other things, concentrating on a different part of the language etc. There isn't a lot of value in me stopping you every time you are speaking, especially when we're in pairs or groups, to correct these mistakes. If I correct you every time you make a mistake you will always be thinking about mistakes and that will slow down your speaking. Speaking very slowly and correcting yourself all the time will stop you progressing and will make it difficult for others to talk to you without feeling impatient or bored.
Normally I correct these types of mistakes when we are speaking in open class (not pairs or groups) or when I'm talking to you one-on-one and I normally use a technique like this:
Student: Yesterday I've been to the cinema.
Teacher: Yesterday I.... (Here I'm telling you that the first two words were ok, but something wasn't right after that)
Student: Yesterday I went to the cinema. (The student remembers that yesterday attracts past simple, not present perfect, and can produce the correct form! WOO! Mistake corrected!)
That works pretty well when you realise quickly what the mistake is. Sometimes we might need a little more help, like this:
Student: Yesterday I've been to the cinema.
Teacher: Yesterday I....
Student: Yesterday I've been at the cinema. (The student here thinks the mistake was with the preposition).
Teacher: Yesterday I.. Tense? (Here I'm telling you what type of mistake you've made)
Student: Yesterday I went to the cinema. (The student gets the idea and can correct the mistake. WOO HOO!!)
The idea for you here is to pay attention to where I stop the sentence, because this will tell you where the mistake happened and you can think quickly to correct it. I won't do this all the time because I want you to be comfortable and feel confident when you are talking to me and not get shy or embarrassed because you think you are speaking incorrectly. Remember, our classroom is a safe place for experimentation and progressing, so it's natural that we will have to make some mistakes along the way, so even if I correct you it doesn't mean you're doing a bad job, it just means I think it's important that you get that particular structure correct or pronounce that particular word better.
You can train yourself to notice your mistakes. If you focus on one area for a week, for example -ed pronunciation in past simple verbs, you can concentrate on making sure you get that correct for the week. Because you are focussed on one thing, it's easier to notice and therefore, to correct. I've used this technique with good effect learning Portuguese. I had big problems conjugating my verbs in the past tense - I was always using the second person form instead of the first person form. I focussed on it for 2 weeks and by the end, I was much better at it. I still make occasional mistakes, but not nearly as often as before.
Errors
Errors are different to mistakes. Our friend Brown says, "An error...reflects the competence of the learner... While mistakes can be self-corrected... an error cannot be self-corrected."
Errors for me are what we call 'teachable moments'. In other words, they show me something that you don't know how to do yet. It could be a difficult structure or maybe a gap in vocabulary or the production of a certain type of sound. If I think an error is really important I will stop our lesson and show the right way to do it - we had this situation recently with the future forms, some of you might remember it. We discovered that we all wanted to use will all the time and weren't using going to, present continuous, or present simple to talk about the future, so we stopped our lesson and looked at the rules for this and did a few quick exercises to practise. Once we were happy that we had the idea, we were able to return to our normal lesson.
Normally when errors happen you might not notice, unless it's an error that results in you not being able to say what you want to say. In general, I make notes of your errors and try to include that material in my plans for the next class or sometimes a class a few days later. The errors that cause you not to be able to say what you want to say are the ones for you to look out for. If you have this situation in your daily life, tell us about it in the class and we can help you to learn the way to say things like that. For me an error is a 'teachable moment' for you it's a 'learning opportunity'.
The End
So there you go, I hope that helps you to see the difference between mistakes and errors and what we can do about them. I'll leave you with the decision making process I use when I hear an error in class. It's based on the work of Jim Scrivener (Scrivener, J. (1994). Learning Teaching. Oxford, U.K.: Macmillan Heinemann English Language Teaching). It's a useful list of things I need to think about when I hear you saying something incorrect.
1. Decide what kind of error has been made (grammatical? pronunciation?, etc.).
2. Decide whether to deal with it (is it useful to correct it?).
3. Decide when to deal with it (now? end of the activity? later?).
4. Decide who will correct (teacher? student self-correction? other students?).
5. Decide on an appropriate technique to indicate that an error has occurred or to enable correction.
Once I've thought about all those things I'll either correct, let you correct, get someone else to correct, or plan a class for the next day based on that topic!
Before we go, here are a couple of useful links with some of the most common mistakes that people learning English make as well as some more information on a teacher's perspective. Enjoy!
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