journal of linguistic studies

this error to category of his errors. You just put them aside as mistakes. From this aspect,
the common sense approach is more advantageous than others.
First, it goes without direct intervention, then, observing students thoroughly.
Isolation is the key stage of this approach, and teachers should note the whole errors
respectively, identify its type, pragmatic errors or linguistic ones, if the errors fall into the
latter kind, he should subdivide into different category: pronunciation, morphology,
semantics, syntax, etc. For different type, he could mark with different sign. Such as: G
for grammatical error (Grammar); M means wrong morphology (Morphology); S
(Syntax) shows syntax error, and so on. In this way it is also much quicker to make a
note. After all the representations, comes the third stage: explanation. In this stage, the
teacher describes the errors, this not only alerts the student that an error has been
identified and is about to be treated, but also describes where the problem is occurring,
(ex: syntax, morphology, semantics, phonology) and what the problem involves (ex:
incorrect production of a phoneme, misuse of verb, incorrect word order, etc.).
He need not direct any error that has been produced. He could make a choice
emphatically. For some global errors, he must explain, either on the blackboard or on the
slide, so all the people can notice. He could elaborate on them himself, or ask students to
discuss, and self-correction or peer-correction is welcome in this stage. But for one or two
inconsiderable errors of someone, he needn’t point them out, just show them to that
student, it is ok. After the thorough explanation, experimentation follows. This stage
could be flexible, either on class or after class, depending on the flow of the lesson or
actual condition. It will vary from teacher to teacher.
Pronunciation problems could be addressed utilizing minimal pairs and points of
articulation, while grammar correction could be handled by contrasting the unacceptable
form with the acceptable form, morphology and syntax problems often involve
developmental errors, such as the overgeneralization of second language verb rules, e.g.,
*buyed instead of bought, it is in fact contrastive, or negative transfer errors. Unlike
traditional correction, where the student is drilled until the correct form is internalized,
experimentation makes no short-term time demands on the student. The student attempts
to correctly use the language in a real communicative environment, which may last an
indeterminate period of time. Arrival at the final stage, learning-acquisition, and students
may learn quickly, and then have to relearn later, or learn slowly and have to relearn
periodically. Days later, the teacher could check some points concerning their errors, give
some topics to communicate, see if they could perform better in the real communicative
situation. The five-stage approach avoids both the monotony and stress of intense audiolingual
classrooms, and is less artificial and yields results as good as or better than
traditional error correction.
5. CONCLUSION
In brief, in spoken language teaching the teacher should treat errors differently, he
need not correct any error or put one aside. To train students to speak bravely is of great
importance. Meanwhile to help them to discover, correct, and seldom commit errors is
much more important. Only in this way, could we lay a solid foundation for further study,
pushing listening, speaking, reading, writing synchronously.
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