Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia UNAD

Vicerrectoría Académica y de Investigación

Instituto Virtual de Lenguas – INVIL
Inglés III – 90121

Reading 2

THE COMMUNICATIVE TREATMENT OF MISTAKES AND ERRORS FOR

THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN INTERLANGUAGE

The communicative approach sees mistakes as a good sign of learning.

Moreover, these are generally corrected if they keep the message from
getting through globally. Communication in the foreign language pays more
attention to those mistakes that can somehow block the message globally
than those ones which block the messages locally. In this respect, corrective
feedback arises as a very important practice in the language room to let
communication go its way. From this view, it is necessary to make a
distinction between the terms Mistake and Error in teaching practice. As
stated earlier the presence of mistakes and errors will be always present in
the students' speech when interacting. Practicing corrective feedback in the
language room has some aspects to consider. Correcting students belongs to
the realm of classroom management and the subsequent interaction.
Mistakes can be self- corrected because they are slips of the tongue and
belong to the students' interlanguage. An error, on the other hand, cannot
be self- corrected. They do not belong to the student's interlanguage. This is
to say the student does not possess the linguistic knowledge to correct him/
herself.