[etni] Indirectly Speaking / Teachers should go easy on written mistakes

Indirectly Speaking / Teachers should go easy on written mistakes
The Daily Yomiuri Online
By Mike Guest

It's funny how differently English teachers treat writing and speaking. In 
speaking, for some time now the mantra has been for English learners not to 
fear making mistakes, that as long as you get your point across and make an 
effort to communicate, you are likely to learn from your mistakes. There is 
widespread positive encouragement to speak without fear, and that one should 
focus upon the meaning rather than details of structure when learners speak. 
Teachers usually do not try to fix every mistake made in speech for fear of 
discouraging the speaker.

On the other hand, I have often found myself, and others, quite critical and 
negative when it comes to dealing with student writing. It seems there's 
nothing more irritating about seeing mistakes in print, the written word's 
permanence somehow offending the senses. For a long time, I cluttered up my 
students' compositions with red correction marks, believing that I was 
encouraging them to fix their mistakes. But actually, in doing so I was 
discouraging them by ignoring what they had written successfully and 
focusing almost exclusively on their shortcomings.

(To read the whole article, go to -
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/language/20080722TDY14003.htm  )


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