Correction and language learning:
There is actually little evidence that active correction of mistakes in spoken English by a teacher helps learners improve their grammar much. Some corrections help learners learn, but most corrections tend to be ignored or forgotten. How much a learner learns depends more on how carefully he/she pays attention than on how much the teacher corrects.
--Mr. Schmidt does correct Huizhen’s errors, but he only corrects her subtly by repeating corrected versions of what Huizhen said wrong. Huizhen just doesn’t notice.
Encounter 2 More notes
Compliment people on their clothes or appearance: --That’s a nice dress. --That’s a smart jacket you’re wearing. --What a pretty dress. --I like your haircut. --I love your shoes. Are they new? You can also say something like “You look nice” or “You’re looking very smart today”. If you want to be more emphatic, you can use adjectives such as “great” or “terrific”. --You’re looking very glamorous. --You look terrific.
--Mr. Schmidt doesn’t think that correcting students’ errors helps their English very much.
--Mr. Schmidt avoids making grammar corrections because he can’t explain English grammar very well.
Native speakers and grammar:
The average native English speaker doesn’t have much explicit knowledge of the rules of English grammars (although some who are English teachers by profession will know grammar very well)—and most don’t especially like grammar. This does not mean that native speakers speak ungrammatically, and it certainly doesn’t mean that native speakers don’t know what is grammatically correct and incorrect. However, like the speakers of any language, native speakers of English learn their mother tongue at a young age without any explicit instruction in grammar, so while they can speak correctly and know
--What a marvelous memory you’ve got!
--Oh, that’s true. Yes, what a good answer!
-- “Look- there’s a boat.” – “Oh yes- well spotted!”
If someone compliments you on your skill, you can say something modest that implies that what you did was not very difficult or skillful.
You can also compliment someone on their appearance by saying that what they are wearing suits them.
--I love you in that dress, it really suits you.
In Britain, do not often comment on each other’s appearance.
what is right and wrong, they generally don’t know how to explain its rules. Often English teachers who are not native speakers of English have a better explicit knowledge of grammar rules because they learned these rules as they learned English.
--Mr. Schmidt doesn’t take teaching very seriously, especially grammar.
Culture notes
Correcting foreigners’ English mistakes: While a language teacher might be willing to interrupt a student of English in order to point out his/her errors, most Westerners would consider this rude or awkward. I fact, in most countries the average person would probably not interrupt a language learner to correct his/her grammar mistakes. What many people will do when talking to foreigners is to correct things the foreigner said wrong by repeating them later correctly, so if the learner pays attention he/she might still learn a lot. (If a learner obviously
--Oh, there’s nothing to it.
-- ‘Terrific job.’ – ‘Well, I don’t know about that.
Unit 3 Speaking in a Foreign Language
Lecture 3
Part I Encounter (Page 39)
Some likely possibilities --Huizhen actually doesn’t make many
mistakes, and Mr. Schmidt doesn’t consider the few mistakes she makes serious. --Mr. Schmidt doesn’t notice Huizhen’s mistakes because he is paying more attention to the content of what Huizhen was saying.
Western approaches to language learning:
Many Western teachers take an approach to language learning and teaching which emphasizes communication, sometimes even at the expense of attention to grammatical accuracy. The idea is that when using English it is more important to understand others and be understood by others than it is to have every sentence be perfectly correct. Of course, this does not mean that grammatical accuracy is unimportant, but it does mean that American teachers may stress grammar less than students from other cultures are accustomed to.
--He took a bite of meat, chewed it, savoured it, and said, “Fantastic!”
--Mm, that was lovely.