Transformating mistakes into learning...

 Today is the 29th of September of 2020. What I had not expected about today was that I was going to become like a magic fairy of education. 

I can imagine your face, a magic fairy? What are you talking about?

The common thread of today's class was an article called 10 mistakes made by learners of English, by J. Rubery (2017, Oxford). Our role was to read that article and create activities to work on those mistakes. My classmate and I focused on Spanish speakers (it was easy to think of what could help us based on our experience). What has impacted us the most was discovering that we still make some of those mistakes and at the same time we were able to create an activity to practice and improve it that could help us as well as our students. Amazing, right?

I truly enjoyed doing this exercise, I felt like a real teacher programming some lessons to focus on the needs of my students. 

This is what we create:

• Think of similar examples of mistakes for Spanish learners of English.

1. The Spanish learners of English usually use the -s for words that are already in the plural. For example children (*childrens), foot (* foots), people (*peoples), women (*womens), etc. 

1. Another one is the order Spanish learners put with the adjectives. For example, in Spanish, we say “Un coche rojo”, first the noun, later the adjective. But in English, the correct form is “a red car”, the other way.

1. Also, in Spanish, the adjectives have the plural particle like the nouns, but in English, this is not correct. For example, “dos coches rojos” and “two red cars”. 

• Design a task, activity, or exercise, including strategies, techniques, resources, or materials to help Spanish learners of English with the ten mistakes identified in the paper.

• Subject-verb agreement: In this case, we propose to do an activity we have called In search of the third person. For this, we are going to create an environment where the students are going to play a role and become grammar spies and their goal is to find all the third persons from a text we are going to give to them and highlight them. Once they are done, the whole group is going to share what they found. The teacher is going to accompany them with some questions to guide the learning aim:

• What is different from a first-person?

• Is the verb written in the same way as if it were a second person?

• Have you noticed something strange in the way it is written?

• Pronunciation of the th: The best way to see as a teacher when your students are pronouncing correctly or not is by listening to them when they speak. But, an easy way to hear everyone's pronunciation of -th would be by listening and singing a song. We can search for a song of a topic we are seeing in class (so it is relationated) that includes a lot of -th sounds. Once they have learned the song they can sing it all together as a group, in small groups, in pairs or individually. So they receive a joyful and attractive stimulus (to sing) with some help from the teacher and the lyrics to learn the correct pronunciation, they keep that in mind, keep on practicing until they acquire the sound in their brain and can sing it correctly (output).

• Please! in the wrong context: This is kind of complicated to work on because it is intrinsic to the personal way of talking to each student. Nevertheless, we can try to create a dynamic where the students can see how in the English language (and culture) the word please is used. For example, we can stipulate some key phrases they would use every day: 

• Could you lend me a pen? (without please)

• Please, sit down in your chairs.

• Be quiet in class (without please)

• Could you help your classmate, please (it is a favor the teacher is asking, we can use please).

•  Using -ing instead of -ed: An attractive way to practice this mistake could be by a card game (in Spanish common called “El juego de las parejas”). The teacher can create cards with a noun with -ed or -ing and a picture that represents the word, for example:

• Mixing Present Perfect and Past Simple: This mistake is very common when acquiring different past tenses. So we have thought about making a TimeLine, where we would have the past, the present, and the future. 

• Forming questions improperly: For this mistake, we have decided that the students will work in pairs, and ask the classmate questions to know him/her better. Before that, we will teach them how to use the questions and the order. 

• Using “since” instead of “for”: To practice this kind of mistake we have thought of asking the students to tell their own story. They will have to use “since” and “for” because the task will have some questions like: 

• How long have you been living where you live? 

• How long have you been at this school?

Then, they will slowly match concepts (grammar concepts, with sounds, with what they have found in their own way in the text) and will come up with the answer: No, it is different! We always use an -s for the third person! If it is not clear to someone, we can complement the activity with a theoretical explanation after the text activity.

Level 3rd of Primary, in a bilingual school.

Once these key phrases are integrated into the day by day life of the class, we can assign some time per class to create a small drama play, an idea for it could be A normal day in London. We can give the students a script or we can write it all together. If they play the role of a native London citizen with its culture, they would be using and practicing how the correct use of please is said. After this activity is done, we can complement it with some theory so they can understand properly how it is used, and relational with what they have said.

- Surprised (a face that seems to be surprised) / Surprising (a person acting surprised in front of a gift).

- Scared (the face of a person who is scared) / Scaring (a ghost or a monster)

This way, the students can play in pairs or small groups, with all the cards face down and they will have to lift two and say the word is defining correctly. If they say it right and the cards are the same they win the pair of cards, if not, they must face down the cards again. With this dynamic they are practicing, pronouncing, and acquiring the content without even knowing, just playing a game of cards. 

This activity can be done on the 1st or 2nd of Primary. Context: Bilingual education.

In this line, we would add the different 

This could work because in that way they will be talking with the equals and that is interesting to the development of the acquisition of the language. Also, they would know their classmates better, so it could be a good game of presentation. 

Then, at the class, we would read some of the stories and ask for feedback. The students must tell if the use of “since” and “for” is correct, and also ask him/her questions about his/her life. 

Some of them I am ready to use it with my student in individual classes. I will write about it when I try them.

See you tomorrow!