Find new ways to identify, analyse and correct your learners’ mistakes.

Think about these questions in relation to your learners.

• What type of mistakes do your learners make?
• What are the causes?

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Identifying and analysing learners’ mistakes Task Use an audio recording device, such as a smartphone, to record your learners during a speaking activity. The audio quality doesn’t have to be very high, just good enough to hear clearly what they say.

 After the lesson, listen to the recording and write down any mistakes you hear. Remember to listen for different kinds of mistakes, including the type and source of errors.



      Error heard                                      Type of error                                            Source of error

1.

2.

3.

4

5.

After the lesson

After listening to this lesson clip, look back over the mistakes you heard. Are there any conclusions you can draw from this short study? Are any types of error very common? Can you think of ways to help learners improve their use of this language?

Next time you teach, consider a wide range of anticipated problems and think about how you will solve them.

Over time, collect a list of problems you have with a particular class type or level or language point or skill. In this way, you will be increasingly better prepared, proactively or reactively, for them when they arise.

2 Follow up

Having identified these issues, make an action plan for your next lesson by completing these sentences:
 • In my next lessons I will try to … (Say what you are going to do.)
• I will do this by … (Say how you will do it.)
 • I will be able to decide whether I have succeeded because … (Say what evidence will show that it worked.)

Using this process should help to anticipate any difficulties that learners may have, and help you to notice more mistakes that learners make. You might have been unaware of these problems before you listened to the recording.