Note: This article was posted to an earlier version of the site in October 2021.

As teachers, helping students realize, understand, and grow from their mistakes is very important. When I saw that BridgeUniverse would be hosting a webinar titled “Oops, They Did It Again! Error Detection and Correction Strategies for the ESL Classroom,” I most definitely geeked out and knew I had to attend. Put simply, the title is about helping students understand and learn from the mistakes they make in the online English classroom.

The panel included speakers Erin Hernandez, owner of Selnate International School, Natasha Isadora, instructor at DEA Canadian College, a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) school, and Rachel Story, teacher and owner of Grateful Gypsies, a blog about lifestyle, teaching, and travelling.

The panelists discussed many helpful tips, and shared useful information that online English teachers will find very helpful for their own instruction.

One example is the difference between a mistake and an error. The biggest difference between a mistake and an error is that a mistake can be corrected by the student themselves, as they will have the language skills and competence to do so. If a student makes an error, they won’t know when to self-correct, because they won’t have the proficiency to do so. Mistakes happen when students forget, errors happen when students haven’t learned what they needed to, and then they don’t know what’s right or not right.

To break things down further, there are two kinds of errors teachers should be aware of: global and local. A global error is usually incomprehensible and interferes with communication, while a local error is usually self-comprehensible to the student and doesn’t interfere with communication.

An example of a global error would be “well, it’s a great hurry around.” (Brown, 2000).

An example of a local error would be “yesterday, I go to the park.” (Brown, 2000).

While correcting students’ mistakes is important to their success, the student shouldn’t start to over-rely on their teacher for corrections. Eventually, a student should be able to listen to themselves and correct their own mistakes, assuming their level of understanding is high enough.

It’s important to keep in mind that while correcting a student’s mistake is one way of helping them in the classroom, corrections need to be executed in a helpful way. You want your student’s affective filter to be as low as possible. This means that you want your student to feel safe and supported during class so they can effectively participate and learn.

Patience is a must while teaching in general, even more so for online teaching. If a student is experiencing fossilization, meaning they have a hard time unlearning a mistake they keep making, it’s important to take the appropriate steps to help them learn new language points.

The panel mentioned different strategies to try for error correction: you could ask your students about how they would like to be corrected, check in with them, don’t interrupt students, try different strategies, take notes, target repeated errors in a separate lesson, focus on errors that cause the most confusion, elicit correct responses for a large imprint on students’ memories, and highlight student wins as well as errors.

A helpful table listing immediate correction tips was shared, which I’ll include below.

Going forward, I now feel more confident in my ability to correct students’ errors while teaching, and if you’re a teacher reading this, I hope that you will, too.