Is It Possible to Get Along Without Mistakes?
How many mistakes does a person make during his life? Can anybody in the great social science industry tell us? Even to the nearest ten thousand? I doubt it and I think I know why. It`s impossible to imagine our life without mistakes.
People are always in the process of learning.
We are always learning. We are learning to walk, to speak, to add, to multiply, to love and work. Our learning skills are quite often much to be desired. Even if we don`t notice our mistakes and don`t feel silly about them, life does everything possible to point our mistakes out to us or to correct. We cannot obtain knowledge without making mistakes, so a teacher is a person whose job is closely connected with an endless stream of errors and constant correcting. A foreign language teacher deals with mistakes at every lesson. He knows a lot about errors, their sorts and ways of correction.
The teacher`s role in the process of correcting mistakes.
The process of learning is connected with constant interchange between a teacher and a pupil. The activities, a foreign language teacher chooses, will run themselves as soon as they get underway. A teacher has to decide whether to join in the activity as an equal member or remain in the background to help and observe. The first way has a number of advantages: the psychological distance between a teacher and a pupil may be reduced and a pupil gets to know his teacher better. Of course, a teacher has to refrain from continually correcting the pupils or using his greater skill in the foreign language to his advantage. But if a teacher joins in the activity, he will then no longer be able judge independently and give advice and help his pupil, which is a teacher`s major role if he doesn`t participate directly. A further advantage of non-participation is that a teacher may unobtrusively observe the performance of several pupils in the foreign language and note common mistakes for revision at later stage. Whatever method is chosen, a teacher should be careful not to correct pupils` errors too frequently. Being interrupted and corrected makes a pupil hesitant and insecure in his speech when he should really be practicing communication. It`s better for a foreign language teacher to use the activities for observation and to help only when help is demanded by a pupil himself.