Errors & Mistakes in listening/speaking

1.      Native Speaker Slips: speech tends to contain more mistakes than writing (written work is more planned). It is wrong to think that native speakers don’t make mistakes/hesitations while fluently speaking. Beginnings and endings of sentences are usually the places for pauses because this is where speaker breathes and plans ahead.

2.      Language Learner Slips:        The basic concept taught in language learning classes is that the best speech is the one in which there is no hesitation. Realistically, this is impossible because learners hesitate even in everyday conversations in their native languages until a properly written script is being read aloud. Teachers think wrong when a student reads fluently that their student has achieved proficiency because the student is reading from a given model, not in his own spontaneous wordings. Teachers should give realistic goals to students instead of penalizing them for failing to achieve the “ideal” and encourage him not to be over conscious of his stumblings.

3.      Correcting in fluency:            Teachers should record mistakes made in a fluent speech by a student and not correct it on the spot. Role plays and other language games give a chance to students to correct themselves because they’ll strive to get the correct form until their message is properly conveyed to other class fellows.

4.      Pronunciation:            Mother-tongue interference is common cause of errors here. Fossilization means when a student repeatedly makes the same phonological mistakes instead of correcting himself and gradually this becomes his permanent pronunciation.

5.      Pedagogical norms:    If students face problems in a particular sound, teach them some other sound that is similar to it, e.g. if they find it difficult to distinguish “cup” from “cap,” tell them that the sound in the first one is more like the middle one in “book.”

6.      Stress and Intonation:            Mostly native speakers misunderstand learners of their language because of the mother-tongue intonation patterns of the learner interfering with those of the target language

Listener’s Role is very important since conversation is a negotiation between a speaker and a listener and both of them have to make sense of the sounds being uttered. Minor errors are ignored as the focus is more on content than form. Teacher should encourage role-plays, jigsaw, and other language activities to make sure that students retain most of what is learnt through enjoyment.