is correcting error helpful for building accuracy?

Imagine yourself being a student sitting in a language class. The teacher has just finished explaining a certain rule of grammar, and now is asking you an assessment question. Answering the question: one part of your mind starts putting the sentence together while making sure its grammar accuracy, then activating your vocal chords … but at the same time, another part of your mind is monitoring what you are doing, inspecting your own speech accuracy and pronunciation, keeping an eye of things, and quite in a sudden this (monitoring) part of your mind catches a wrong ending on the verb you are pronouncing, and right at the very second you manage to correct it just before it gets out of your mouth (with a slight hesitation).

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While monitoring error may make a small contribution to accuracy through conscious reason, the research indicates that it is the acquisition that makes the major contribution to the development of natural accuracy. Besides, it is very difficult to keep every grammar rule consciously in your head while trying to have a conversation.

After studying some grammar rules and vocabulary, our students may immediately be able to produce some output and to translate a sentence or two, word-for-word, phrase-for-phrase, from Indonesian to English, but the result won’t probably sound as natural. It’s because each language has its own unique sensibility that cannot be fully captured to the other language through mere grammatical translation method taught in learning method.

One of the main functions of student output is thus to let the teacher know where students are in terms of their acquisition. If the teacher notices students having difficulty with something in particular, then the first thing the teacher might want to consider is to provide more examples of it in the input.

Watch the video below to explore this topic further.

is error correction helpful for developing fluency?

“The major, who had been the great fencer, did not believe in bravery, and spent much time while we sat in the machines correcting my grammar. He had complimented me on how I spoke Italian, and we talked together very easily. One day I had said that Italian seemed like such an easy language to me that I could not take a great interest in it; everything was so easy to say. “Ah yes,” the major said, “Why then, do you not take up the use of grammar?” So we took up the use of grammar, and soon Italian was such a difficult language that I was afraid to talk to him until I had the grammar straight in my mind.”

(E. Hemmingway, In Another Country)

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Some research shows that when we focus on rules when speaking, we produce less information, and we slow down. This can seriously disrupt conversation. Some people “over-monitor” and are so concerned with grammar and accuracy that speech is slow and even painful to produce as well as to listen to.

So if we want to speak fluently, then over-actively checking everything for grammar before it gets out of our mouth is going to be a hindrance rather than a help. It makes us anxious and it slows down our language production.

One of the primary functions of student output is to let the teacher know where students are in terms of their acquisition. If the teacher notices students having difficulty in speaking with fluency, then the first thing to consider might be to provide them more input so they may acquire and develop greater intuition of the language. Once they begin to feel click with language, they will be able to tap for fluent self-expression.