I'm sure you've been corrected many times when speaking in a foreign language in language classes or in real life, and we've been forced to believe that it's an excellent practice but, is error correction actually useful for language teaching or language acquisition?
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Entiendo lo que dices, Álvaro; es molesto que te corrijan, sobre todo si interrumpe el flujo cuando estás hablando. Y a menudo uno mismo se da cuenta del error justo después de haberlo cometido, por lo que la corrección era innecesaria. Pero tengo una amiga que lleva años cometiendo el mismo error en inglés, a pesar de que su inglés es muy bueno. ¿Cómo puedo ayudarla a superarlo, sin corregirla?
I understand what you’re saying, Alvaro; it’s annoying to be corrected, especially if it interrupts the flow when you’re speaking. And you often realise the mistake yourself just after you’ve made it, so the correction was unnecessary. But I have a friend who has been making the same mistake in English for years, even though her English is very good. How can I help her to overcome it, without correcting her?
I’ll answer in English John, but your Spanish part was great 🙂 That’s actually an excellent question, and the way to help her is to use it as much as possible yourself when you talk with her. That way she won’t feel like she’s being corrected and she’ll listen to the right form many times in context until her brain eventually picks it up and acquires it! Like you said, it’s one thing to consciously know the right way to say it (which she already does), and a completely different thing to be able to actually use it in a conversation in real time. Thanks so much for your question!!