Tuesday I had lunch with my Finnish friend, Matti, who is taking private English lessons and has done so for the last 2 years. His teacher is a freelance English teacher from the University of Eastern Finland. According to Matti, she is respected amongst her colleagues and is a very good teacher.
Anyways.
Three weeks ago, I corrected one of Matti's presentations (written presentation). I found quite a few mistakes, but based on different learning theories and instructions from my home university, I decided to correct only 2 sentences - which I btw, didn't correct myself, but had Matti correct them. Those two sentences were I felt we had a communication failure - the rest of the presentation was quite good, in my opinion.
Tuesday, Matti told me that his English teacher had corrected his presentation (this was after I had corrected it) and had found around 50 mistakes - and had corrected all 50 of them! I was very surprised and explained him why I didn't correct everything. I felt I had to explain it to him, because he seemed to be very confused. How come I wasn't good enough to locate all of his mistakes?
In addition to this he told me that this is the procedure every time they meet (app. 4 times a month). Based on some books (he chooses his own books), he writes a presentation and presents in orally. She doesn't correct him while he's presenting his work, but goes through every single mistake after the presentation.
I asked him if she encourages him by pointing-out positive things in his work?
And do you know what his answer was?
- Laughing.. "No! She never does that! Almost never. I'm an adult learner. I don't need to be encouraged in that way. If I was a kid, she would probable do it.."
...If he was a kid she might give him compliments for his English skills.. Well. From the observation I've done so far, it is very, very seldom I hear or see anything that could be a compliment. They usually speak Finnish in the English classrooms, so I'm not 100% sure of this, though..
What do you think about this?
When should one compliment students for their English skills?
Where is the limit between too few and too many compliments?
..And what about correcting English?
I don't know which level Matti's English was at before he started his lessons, but now he's quite good. According to him his English skills have developed a lot since his first private lesson.
Something is working..
Feedback works. But you need to know - any age -what you're doing right and what you have to work on.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to work with Matti, I would try to find his areas of hypothesis testing, e.g. by asking him to underline words/phrases where he is in doubt or write the two or more versions he cannot choose between in order to externalise his hypothesis testing areas.
I would possible correct all mistakes but work on just a few - selecting a category which was both important for communication and had potentions for expanding his language.
Correcting mistakes often do not lead to expansiong of language - making it more complex and varied - but only secures (perhaps) accuracy. You need to focus on language development and exapansion which, of course, also needs to involve feedback on accuracy.
Discussed some of those points with Matti the other day - and got a few copies of the written feedback his teacher has given him. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Lilian. Always nice with a little repetition of things I've already been told a few times.