CELTA Online Unit 19 Peer Correction

As with prompting self-correction or reformulation of what students say (which was examined in
Correction and Reformulation), encouraging students to self-correct their own writing engages them
more with the learning process and encourages a greater level of accuracy in general.

Each of the approaches described above involve the teacher commenting, correcting and reformulating
in the first instance. However, it is also possible for students to comment on and correct each others’
work after it has been produced, as was seen in one of Fiona’s lessons. Again, this has the advantage of
raising students’ awareness of accurate use of language as well as encouraging peer teaching, with the
students being exposed to examples of good language. It also develops students’ confidence in their
ability to edit their own work - a useful skill, both in real life and in exams. However, if the students are
the first to comment on written work, it is important that this is followed up by the teacher’s comments,
reformulations and corrections. This is because students are usually unable to pick up on all the
language which needs corrections or reformulations.