What do your teachers do to help you stop making the same mistakes? Do they use any effective strategy?
In the past I used to have lessons one-to-one in person. The teacher wrote down all my mistakes I had made during the lesson. At the end of the lesson he asked me to correct myself and gave me the paper with all mistakes written. Next lesson he always prepared useful exercices or some activities to check my knoledges and to find out whether I was making the mistakes again or not. I found this strategies really helpful. It worked for me perfectly.
I think it is really important in what way, when or how your teacher corrects all your mistakes during the online lessons. In my case, if they do not write down or interrupt me all the time I am sure, that I manage to remember maximum 10% of them or I feel so stressed that I continue making mistakes much more.
What about you? Share your experiences with me, please.
Yvona, it sounds like you had a very good tutor.
A lot depends on the level of the student, of course.
If I have an elementary students and every other word there is a mistake, I take notes only on the mistakes on a topic we are working on. Let's say that day we are working on tenses, then I will be correcting mostly that. This is because I don't want to overwhelm my students and then, I have noticed that we simply can't retain every single thing and act upon every correction.
However, that changes when my students move up. Of course, an upper-intermediate student has to focus on accuracy so 80% of the mistakes are going to be corrected. I try to get my students to self- correct it is so useful and far more effective.And it leaves my students quite satisfied.
They are satisfied because mistakes don't feel as bad when you are correcting yourself.
After, I get them to write some sentences on the corrections.
Look forward to hearing what other tutors have to say !
Hi Yvona, I regret not to be able to answer your question because I've never taken any English lessons, be it by Skype or in person. Actually, I taught myself.
So, I have no idea about any kind of methods used by any teachers.
Nice topic.
Elfin:
Thank you for your contribution to this discussion. You seem to be a really good teacher. You are right, it depends on the student's level and also the way how you correct your students seems to be considerate and effective as well.
When I had 1 on 1 lessons at a language school, teachers gave me the paper like you at the end of lesson. We talked about it for 3-5 minutes and decided my homework until the next lesson. And at the beginning of the next lesson, we discussed about the homework for 5-10 minutes.
