1. What not to correct
Christine Thompson

3. What actually makes an utterance ‘wrong’?
context
register
nuance or connotation
gender, race, sexual orientation as in-group or out-group

4. Good reasons to correct
standardization
to highlight patterns: spelling collocations, article usage, register etc.
to prevent students from embarrassing themselves in front of friends and colleagues, or to avoid negative attention
to address mis-speech with potential for misunderstanding or an erroneous exchange of information

5. Bad reasons to correct
the teacher feels it’s her job to provide feedback on everything that is produced in class regardless of how distracting it might be
pressure from other students in the class i.e. You’re not going to let her get away with saying that are you?
students’ pronunciation or word choice is from a dialect different to the teacher’s own e.g. herb vs (h)erb, often, envelope, at the weekend/on the weekend
to prove the teacher’s superiority by point- scoring against difficult students
when a correction would interrupt the flow of conversation or embarrass the student

6. You say potato, I say spud i.e. How can we define standardization?
How frequently is the word, or form used? In what context and by whom?
How clearly is the message conveyed by the particular word or phrase?
How appropriate is the utterance to the context, listener/reader?
Will the message be accurately understood by the majority of listeners/readers?

7. Which versions do you feel are most acceptable?
I already did it.
I done it already.
I’m after doing it.
I have already done it.
I done, done it.

8. ‘home office’ ‘bio’ ‘open space’ ‘wifi free’ ‘happy hours’
Czech and other ‘isms’
‘home office’
‘bio’
‘open space’
‘wifi free’
‘happy hours’

9. Katakana Eigo
hair manicure
cake viking
He is a very going my way man.

10. Katakana Eigo unmasked
temporary wash-out hair colour
an all-you-can-eat cake buffet
used to describe someone who acts independently of the group or consensus and is thus viewed as being selfish i.e. not a team player

11. Do you speak-ah my language?
370 million-ish native speakers of English
470 million to 1 billion, non-native speakers of English (depending on who you ask)
Native and non-native speakers combined, English is the most widely spoken language worldwide.

12. How can you get the most bang for your error correction buck?
focus on meaning
focus on global errors
don’t interrupt
adjust expectations
learner training
talk to students about your error correction strategy
give students some of what they want: explicit correction

13. Further Reading
ESL/ELL Error correction yes, no maybe?’ Larry Ferlazzo braddock/larry-ferlazzo-eslell-error-correction-yes-no-or- maybe
‘Error Correction in ESL: Learner's Preferences’ James A Oladejo w/619