Teacher Discussion Forums

What good mistakes do teachers make?

As an English teacher at a California university, I often try to encourage students to stretch themselves and "make good mistakes" in my class so we can make new, different, and better mistakes in the future. A good mistake, from my perspective, is a reasonable - even predictable mistake that we can learn from and move on. For example, a student confuses the spelling for the number 2 (two) with the preposition (to). Homonyms give even native speakers a headache.

On the other hand, some structural problems are deeply ingrained "good mistakes" that will take a long time and focused effort to correct and overcome. For example, if a Korean student "forgets" to use the articles "a", "an" or "the" on a paper, then I also consider that a "good mistake." We often learn best by identifying good mistakes. But to know, and not do, as the ancient sages remind us, is to not know.

But I would like to put the shoe on the other foot for this online discussion. What good mistakes have your English teachers made? Do they speak on in a monotone? Do you use too many unfamiliar words? Do they forget their students' names? What do they do that limits their effectiveness?

Consider me curious.

Eric
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It's just a list of questions and quotes!!!! How much are you charging for this?

It's rubbish

the idea of making mistakes on purpose to let the students participate and move to improve their skills is fine. However, in my country ,Morocco, English is a foriegn language, and making mistakes in the classroom makes the teacher less educated for the students. They think that the teacher is in someway weak in English and he just shows off.

I actually didn't understand the question.... But I know one thing that there should be no "mistakes on purpose".... students should hear the right variants because later they might not be able to remember what was the right way to say .....
It's very dangerous for students....

I really don't follow what you are trying to get across Eric. It seems to be that you are simply promoting your book. Perhaps you can enlighten us a bit...

Perhaps I was less than clear. Let me see if I can clarify what constitutes a "good mistake", and why I consider making good mistakes essential to learning English.

Let's take a common "good mistake" like using the word "he" for a woman. Now, the speaker recognizes that the correct pronoun for a woman is "she", but slips while speaking due to nervousness, habit, or some other reason. The speaker didn't say "it", which would be a bad mistake, but just made a simple slip of the tongue. This gaffe is a "good mistake".

Expecting, even encouraging good mistakes, doesn't mean welcoming errors and teaching errors. It means providing students with the freedom to try new words, explore new sentence patterns, and take chances in a safe, tolerant atmosphere. You reward risk-taking instead of punishing errors.

One effective technique to creating a positive teaching environment is encouraging English students, especially ESL students, to “make good mistakes” as they expand their vocabulary, experiment with new sentence structures, and use English more in their daily lives.

A good mistake, as I explain on the first day of class, is a logical error that makes sense, but just happens to be wrong. For example, a young boy might think 2+2= 22. You can see the logic, but the answer is wrong. The student needs to know that 2+2=4. But you can also acknowledge that “22″ is a good mistake. Some teachers might consider this mistake a systems error or category confusion.

Far too many ESL students, especially in countries that worship standardized exams, have created psychological barriers to experimenting in English. These students often want to avoid making any mistakes, and prefer to remain silent in conversation class to expanding their verbal skills. The ESL teacher, therefore, has to directly confront this trend or learned behavior. You can’t learn to speak a new language without making mistakes.
Yes, I encourage English students, in both conversation and writing classes, to make good mistakes. Take chances. Try something new. Stretch your learning muscles. And make good mistakes. A good mistake is also a mistake that we acknowledge and learn from and avoid repeating.

Let's be clear. A good mistake is not a good mistake if you’ve made it ten times before in a class or on previous papers. Students usually understand, relax a bit, and proceed to experiment a bit more in our crazy, confusing, and misspelled English language.

Our goal, I sometimes joke on that first day, is to make many good mistakes, learn from these good mistakes, and move forward to make new, different, and even better good mistakes.” We usually realize this goal in our English classes!