Mod 1 Discussion: Classroom Implications of Linguistic Theory

While traditional approaches often emphasized correcting students each and every time they made a mistake, the new thought is that by focusing solely on errors educators can incur detrimental effects and that holding back on correction, students could achieve greater benefits. For example:

1. It has been suggested that by constantly correcting students, the teacher can increase anxiety and stress in the students and, thus, create a psychological filter that would block students from processing and acquiring new language input. This could eventually lead to reduced motivation and participation. Teachers should therefore seek to create a low-anxiety environment where students would feel comfortable taking risks.
2. Teachers should encourage risk -taking in language which could then lead to exploration and experimentation. This approach would allow students to discover the correct forms of expression for themselves.
3. By promoting self-correction, teachers can support learner autonomy which is essential for for long-term language development.
4. Finally, by not constantly correcting students, the teacher will encourage the idea that language is for meaningful communication rather than grammatical correctness.

Some of the ways that teachers can foster self-correction in their students would be through such techniques as explicit error correction, self-monitoring strategies and metalinguistic awareness tasks. These approaches would increase the student's awareness of their errors and provide them with opportunities to identify and fix those errors for themselves.