Correcting speaking

Tony Lee - Shengda College, Zhengzhou, Henan, China

I do not correct every little mistake, and it is not immediately immediate. There are few opportunities for teacher monitored individual speaking - up to the maximum of a whole 3 minutes per person per week when a whole class (32 students) activity is involved.

We have a couple of oral classes of 60 students. Divide that number into 100 minutes!!! The opportunities for leisurely individual appraisal and counselling are aqlmost non-existing -- so at the end of each student's speech I praise it as lavishly as possible and tell the student of ONE major problem and how to go about correcting it.

Reinforcing the importance of active listening by requiring peer appraisal and honest reporting by a randomly selected student seems to help as otherwise the rest of the class just switches off. I agree that to stop at each error would be counterproductive and I was just trying to reinforce the finding that the students do want to be corrected immediately - and I know the keen ones really do mean immediate. Students cannot get discouraged from speaking because they do not have a choice of opting out of a speech.

If it is an impromptu speech and they are obviously stuck then of course I do not allow them to stand there losing face -- I will relate cases where experienced actors have a mental blank and go on with the next speaker and give them a chance for more preparation.

We are supplied with texts and sometimes even with the corresponding tapes of such poor quality that they are useless. The students (and I) hate the books involving drill and soon get sick of a semester of 'argument' or 'discussion' or the provocatively named 'reproduction' (which for 10 microseconds led me to believe the subject might be slightly more interesting - until I opened it to the first page -- silly me) so we have been very grateful for some of the ideas we get from others.

Over concern with shyness/losing face/self esteem can hold the learning process back. These are not 10 year old kids -- they are 19 to 23 year old ADULTS. When I speak in English with some seniors (I have not taught any) who have been learning English for 10 years and find that I am forced to speak at a lower level than I speak to kindergarten kids (I have taught once or twice) back home, I wonder what harm a little losing face can do.