CORRECTION and ACCURACY in SPOKEN ENGLISH

Now we talk about correction and accuracy in spoken English. Most of the people agree that making mistakes is a part of learning. Most of people also agree that correction is a part of teaching. So because of that, the paper in this case offer sound, practical, on useful technique and approaches in the modern ELT classroom. Most of the way of paper suggested in these paper can be adapted and can be use for almost any class and by any teachers. When this series being planned, high on the list of priorities was a book on mistake and correction on language teaching. And this paper also aims to provide guidelines on how to help learners to achieve fluency and accuracy in spoken English.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the main question we ask ourselves about learners’ mistake concerned how to prevent learners from making them. This paper is concerned with much more interesting questions; when to correct mistakes and when not to, and how to correct them. The paper suggest many practical technique for helping our students to accept and learn from their mistake without being discouraged by them. Accuracy refers to the use of correct forms where utterances do not contain errors affecting the phonological, syntactic, semantic or discourse features of a language.

Therefore, even as teachers help learners to produce correct forms in English, it is also important that they help them to get across their communicative intent as effectively as possible in listener-speaker situations.

One commonly held view is that the way we correct during spoken ‘accuracy work' will be significantly different from the way we correct during more open spoken ‘fluency work – when students are involved in communicating ideas and opinions. Whereas in the former case we may pick out most of the mistakes we hear and deal with them immediately, in the latter case we will be less rigorous and wait before we intervene.

 CORRECTION  and  ACCURACY  in SPOKEN ENGLISH

spoken accuracy is most important for our learners when they are practicing carefully something that has just been presented to them, such as a new verb tense.

Correct the grammar

            Some teachers like to say, “Good” when a student gets something right. Some teachers think that they shouldn’t be involved in praise or criticism of the students. This is a personal decision for you to make, based on your knowledge of your students. What is important is that students feel that the teacher cares based from about their progress.

            But  what if  the students make a mistake? What does the teacher do then? The first thing to remember is that the best form of correction is self-correction.

Self-correction

People usually prefer to put their own mistakes right rather than be corrected by someone else. Self-correction easy to remember. Because someone has put something right in his or her own head. It is particularly important to give a chance for self-correction when you think that a mistake is what we have called a slip. In this case give the student a little time to recognize the mistake and the correct.

Peer-correction

Peer-correction is particularly use full in the case of what we called errors.

The four advantages of peer-correction :

Firstly, when a learner make a mistake and another learner correct it. Both learner are involved in listening to and thinking about the language.

Secondly, when a teacher encourages learners to correct each other’s mistake, the teacher gets a lot of important information about the students’ ability. Can they hear a particular mistake? Can they correct it?

Thirdly, the students become used to the idea that they can learn from each other. So, peer-correction help learners cooperate and helps make them less dependent on teachers.

Fourthly, if students get used to the idea of peer-correction without hurting each other’s feelings, they will be able to help each learn when they work in pairs and groups. When the teacher can’t hear what is said.

Two problems with peer-correction

Firstly, when the teacher asks for peer correction from the whole class. It might be that the same two or three people always want to answer.

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

 Teacher correction

            If self-correction and peer-correction fail at the first. The teacher can some time help by focusing attention on the place where the mistake occurs. Technique of counting on fingers can be used whenever something is missing, whether it is a sound, or syllable in a word, or a word in a sentence. As a last resort, if all others possibilities fail, the teacher gives the correct from and than say the whole sentence. As no one has been able to make the correction, the teacher will often ask the whole class to repeat the correct sentence together.

There  are two points to note here:

 a)     When the teacher finds that no one in a class can correct a particular mistake, the teacher must realize that this point has not yet been generally learned.

b)     When correcting a mistake such as the one above, there is a danger of overstressing the corrected part in the order to make the correction clear.

Correcting the saying

 When a student gets a sentence grammatically correct, but sounds lifeless. The teacher should ask for a more natural saying of the sentence. Some students feel embarrassed about this at first. So a good way to begin is by having all the students say the sentence together. Intonation is equally important. We can teach intonation on its own. when a student says something without any real intonation. It isn’t really correct. We can make a general point about stress and intonation. Although stress and intonation are important. The pronunciation of individual sounds in words is also worth correcting when you notice that an obvious mistake occur frequently.

 Dialogue

The first thing to say about correction here is that you should let the student get to the end of what the students is supposed to be saying. Don’t interrupt. If it is a short dialogue, let the students finish the whole thing before you give feedback.

 CONCLUSION

language students are considered successful if they can communicate effectively in their second or foreign language. It seems that the focus has swerved from accuracy to fluency Most English teachers believe that error correction is necessary. In fact, they think it’s vital. Many students, who have been trained by their schools and teachers, also believe that they need to have their speaking errors constantly corrected. When a student speaks, the teacher will directly or indirectly focus on their mistakes.

Give a change for self correction and if possible use peer correction rather than direct teacher correction. However the correction is done. Ask the student who first made the mistake of repeat the correct utterance. We can help student improve their stress and intonation if we give them something to see as well  as something to hear.

Concentrate on the most important learning points. In spoken practice work on the correctness of stress and intonation using visual support. Correction should not mean insisting on everything being absolutely correct. Correction mean helping the students to become more accurate in their use of language or completely standard English. Involving learners in making judgements about correctness helps them become more accurate in their own use of the language.