Self-Correction the Silent Way
Techniques for Teachers of ESL/EFL and Foreign Languages
Mar 19, 2009
Dr. Caleb Gattegno (1911-1988), inventor of an approach to foreign-language teaching known as The Silent Way, developed numerous techniques for subordinating teaching to learning. These help students develop the habit of monitoring their speech and correcting their own mistakes.
Caleb Gattegno on Mistakes
In workshops he gave in the 1970s, Gattegno often said that mistakes are “precious indicators of the discrepancy between what is and what ought to be.” Silent Way practitioners see mistakes as useful tools for learning – if teachers can manage to refrain from shouting out corrections and instead allow the students to work on their problems.
Providing Feedback on Mistakes
If a student says, “I didn’t saw the sign,” the teacher needs to indicate in some way that there’s a mistake in this sentence. Not to do so is to deprive the student of a chance to learn and to put him on the road to fluency in bad English. So, a good teacher might say, “Something’s wrong – say that again, please.”
It’s also possible to indicate this same idea with a simple gesture such as a shake of the head or a movement of the hand. Another possibility is for the teacher to write “I didn’t _____ the sign” on the board. The aim is to give the student feedback on his or her production and, if necessary, to indicate where the mistake is located in the sentence.
Getting Out of the Students’ Way
In this manner, the teacher is using silence as an educational tool and getting out of the way so the student can work on the problem. If the student corrects herself, she’s developing the very habit she needs to be independent of the teacher. If she can’t make the correction, the teacher may then and there launch a lesson on what happens when did, do, etc. are used in negative sentences and questions.
Below are a few examples of specific techniques that can aid foreign-language students in monitoring their own speech.
Silent-Way Finger/Hand Techniques for Self-Correction
- Fingers Representing Words: an easy way to zero in on one word that needs changing (See Figure 1, below).
- Twisting Two Fingers: indicates that the word order must be inverted (Figure 2).
- Scissors Gesture: tells the students to cut off the last part of a word or phrase (Figure 3).
Silent-Way Self-Correction Techniques for Written Work
- Mark Homework: use simple symbols to indicate bad spelling, a missing word, etc. (Figure 4).
- Group Correction: before the students arrive, rewrite some of their incorrect sentences (taken from homework) on handouts or on the board. Have the whole group analyze each sentence, trying to find the mistakes (Figure 5).
Silent-Way Oral Techniques for Self-Correction
- The Grunt: the teacher repeats what the student just said, but replaces the word(s) that need correction with a grunt or hum.
- Humming to Indicate Stress: this can be used to indicate which words must be stressed in a phrase or where the accent falls in an individual word.
These are only a few examples of many techniques which teachers can invent in order to give foreign-language students feedback on their spoken and written production. Silent-Way hand gestures, marking systems and oral techniques impel students to develop the habit of correcting themselves and put them on the road to independence in a foreign or second language.
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