I’m feeling a little bit frustrated! Another term is coming to an end in our institute and I still have this problem in my classes. I would be eternally grateful if anyone could suggest anything that might help.

Here’s the problem: Our students, our female students in particular (our classes here are either boys or girls - young adults and adults, ages 16 to 25), don’t pay enough attention to their accuracy while speaking.. At intermediate level they constantly make simple mistakes with tenses (e.g. present instead of the past), parts of speech, with the third person “s”, etc. They obviously know the grammar. When I stop them or with a gesture show that they have made a mistake, they can correct themselves. The thing is that it seems to me they don’t really care about speaking correctly and they mostly want to just talk and communicate their thoughts. I have talked to them and have told them that accuracy is very important and they assure me that it’s important for them as well, but still… . They are fluent and speak at a proper speed for their level but their accuracy leaves something to be desired. I have used and am using different error correction methods. I encourage peer correction, I correct them on the spot when appropriate, I write their mistakes on the board and ask them to correct, etc.

Do you have the same problem? If so, how do you handle it?

Tonight, I even talked to them about setting some kind of punishment for repeating a mistake (humorously of course) and I am seriously considering it!