Section One – Classroom Observation Instrument
Luckily this is not referring to a musical instrument!
I must design an instrument that I will use when observing a series of lessons. My initial thought was based on ‘Lesson Staging and Linking’ but this required a lot of research into methodologies used by current teachers and how each stages of a lesson are linked. Unfortunately I had to change this first instrument due to lack of time available – I work over twenty hours a week plus I do over ten hours of studying!
So, I had to change to my mind! My thoughts are now turned to Error Correction – this seems like a broad subject but it is interesting to note how (and when) teachers correct their student’s errors. I propose the following questions when before analyzing error correction:
Which errors should be corrected? Which should be ignored?
Who should be correcting the errors? The teacher? The student themselves?
How do teachers correct students? How do teachers encourage self-correction?
When should correction should take place during the lesson? After each activity? Towards the end of the lesson? Is it O.K. for teachers to do on-the-spot correction?
How much time should teachers do error correction in the lesson?
The list is not exhaustive but it does provide an interesting study into how much error correction teachers do in a given time frame.
Error correction is one of the most important aspects of teaching. The students need to know when they mistakes and WHY they make them. If students can learn and understand how errors are produced in the first place then they are likely not to repeat the same mistakes. I think self awareness for students is very important for them to succeed in language learning.
