Error Correction Activities

Activity 1 [lexical] – Evaluate, discuss, add your ideas.

·        Give Ss sentences with certain words underlined

·        Ss in pairs/groups check which are correctly used

·        Examples based on past/common mistakes

·        e.g. a) The flowers fainted in the breathless room

b) The girl wilted in the airless room

Activity 2 [Functional] – Evaluate, discuss, add your ideas

·        Open pairs practise a dialogue, e.g. inviting and refusing politely

·        encourage others to take notes on the language used

e.g. ‘you like come to my party?’

·        Students listen to an authentic dialogue between native speakers (or semi-authentic recorded by teachers)

·        Ss take notes on language they hear, and ‘notice’ differences

·        Closed pairs practise again with different roles but same function practised

Activity 3 [Fluency work] – Evaluate, discuss, add your ideas

·        Ss mingle during fluency stage

·        T mingles, listens, takes notes on good language and errors

·        Notes then used as a game

e.g. Grammar Auction, Board race, Maze, etc.

Activity 4 [Focus on verb forms using video] – Evaluate, discuss, add your ideas

·        Ss watch/listen to short clip

·        Ss note down every verb they hear

e.g. stranded, ignored, arrived

·        Ss compare those verbs with each other

·        Ss listen again and ‘pad out’ verbs into full forms used

e.g. have been stranded, were ignored, will arrive

·        Ss listen again and add co-text

e.g. …passengers have been stranded for 48 hours…

…they were ignored by the ground staff…

Activity 5 [The teacher is corrected!] – Evaluate, discuss, add your ideas

·        Teacher  tells an anecdote, deliberately making mistakes

·        Ss, in teams, listen carefully and try to spot them

·        They gain points for identifying mistakes and bonus points for correcting them

·        Teacher can focus on a variety of past mistakes by Ss

Activity 6 [Pronunciation - sounds] – Evaluate, discuss, add your ideas

·        Teacher gives Ss a list of minimal pairs

e.g. prawn/prone

ship/sheep

caught/coat

·        Ss practise together, after initial help from teacher

·        Ss decide together which words they will call out to the teacher, who boards the ones he/she hears

·        Ss immediately realise if their pronunciation is correct or not

Activity 7 [Acceptable or not?] – Evaluate, discuss, add your ideas

·        Teacher gives Ss a list of sentences, based on past errors

e.g. I’ve written three letters this morning

I’m wanting to buy that book

Me and Jim are eating out tonight

·        Ss decide which are correct, and why (not), and are encouraged to draw on previously learnt knowledge

e.g. ‘to want’ not used in continuous forms

Activity 8 [Recording] – Evaluate, discuss, add your ideas

·        Teacher uses sound recorder or video recorder, and records Ss’ fluency practice

·        Ss can review their language use with reference to a particular lexical, grammatical and/or phonological point

·        Different groups can be given different areas to analyse