journal of linguistic studies

introduce the target language culture background step by step; open some subjects
covering its history, society, humanistic community, etc. Lectures, books or journals in
these fields will be also helpful. All the approaches above are supported by teachers and
researchers. But to the errors in this aspect, they could reach a conclusion, and the
correction varies from person to person.
Discussing further in class, you could not elaborate due to limited time. Dealing with
the errors later, it is hard for you to arouse full attention, perhaps the students have
already left them out of mind. To the intra-lingual interference, we should emphasize
grammar study, sentence structure, conduct drills repeatedly, and ask students to pay
attention to the accuracy of their speech. The errors produced in this stage ought to be
corrected, which is advocated by most teachers. But how to do that and when to do that
may have some disagreements. Pointing out errors on the spot, you have to interrupt the
student, as a result, he could not continue his representation as he has planned, and he
may even develop negativity. Dealing with them later, they will not leave a deep
impression on him.
To the non-linguistic interference, most people share the view that such errors need
not to be corrected, since the speaker are shy, nervous, tired, etc. They will disappear as
time passes. While there are still a minority insist that they should be corrected as well,
because repeated and unconscious commitments will lead to “error-fossil”.
4. A COMMON SENSE APPLICATION TO ERRORS IN SPOKEN ENGLISH
This approach is composed of five stages: discovery, isolation, explanation,
experimentation, and learning-acquisition. And it is student-centred. Traditionally the
speaking class is teacher-centred. Most time is devoted to teachers’ inquiry.
Comparatively this approach provides students with lots of opportunities to speak in
class. It is minimally disruptive to both the flow of the lesson and student motivation.
In such classrooms teachers will play a role as an organizer and listener. In the
process of representation by the student, the teacher could listen quietly and make a note
of the errors. He needn’t point them out on the scene. After all the representations, he
could focus on some. According to the coverage and frequency of errors, he may have a
definite object in view. In class, there could be many forms of communication, such as
dictation, question-answer, brief interview, dialogue, group work, etc. In any activity,
errors are inevitable. The teacher must listen carefully in order to identify and note errors.
He could put errors under different student respectively. A sentence containing errors
should be isolated for subsequent treatment. It is good to keep that whole sentence, better
with the previous or the next one. If the same kind of error appears again, he could just
mark a certain sign, showing its repeated occurrence. In this stage he should discriminate
“mistake” and “error”.
Errors are classified along two lines: global or local, global errors can be defined as
those that affect comprehension, while local errors, though linguistically non- or substandard,
do not break down communication, but cause misunderstanding somehow.
Errors actually involve language that has not been acquired or has been incorrectly
acquired, while mistakes are idiosyncratic, careless, and inconsistent. In the daily
teaching, it is not easy to tell them apart.
Sometimes, the student will violate grammar rules, making some errors, but as the
communication goes on, he may discover the errors himself, or find it with the help of his
partner, and then he corrects them on his own. Under that situation, you couldn’t attribute
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