The above photograph, was shared in this month’s Cambridge English Empower competition, got many of you thinking about the key role played by mistakes – and humour – in language learning.
The fear of making mistakes
Donna Leventakis wrote that students’ reluctance to speak English stems from their fear of making mistakes and being laughed at. She suggested using this picture to show that the laughter that we hear when we make a mistake in a foreign language is nothing to be scared of! As she wrote, “We do laugh when a mistake is funny just like the people in the picture but we are not making fun of the person. Even the person himself is laughing at his error. You can see everyone smiling which is something good not bad. If they can understand this, they will overcome their fear. These mistakes are the best way to learn and others learn along with you!”
Donna also proposed that, as teachers, we should make use of our own mistakes to help learners lose their fear of making errors. She often tells her students about the time she added one letter to a Greek word for ‘drink’, and accidentally said the word for a type of kiss instead! Seeing that even their teachers make mistakes may help learners lose their own fear of errors.
Encourage the sharing of stories
Marcus Higgs of Spain developed Donna’s idea by suggesting that students should share their own embarrassing stories about problems they’ve encountered due to language barriers. (The central character in the photograph has just told his friends about the time her swallowed some eye drops because he couldn’t understand his doctor’s instructions.) Learners share their stories in pairs, while the teacher walks around monitoring, and listening out for particularly good examples. Group error correction then focuses on the past tense, before students switch partners and tell their stories again. Finally, some students would share their stories with the class.
Ready, Set, Go
This month’s winning suggestion took a different approach. Sandi Ferdiansyah of Indonesia shared an activity called Ready, Set, Go. Students form groups of four, and one student from each group comes to the front of the class to take a look at the picture. Meanwhile, the teacher distributes a table consisting of three columns: Ready (observation), Set (comment), and Go (context) (4 minutes).
After 2 minutes, the students return to their groups, where they have to describe what they have seen, and write 5 sentences about the picture in the ‘Ready’ column. The group then discusses the picture, based on the first student’s description, and write 5 more sentences about it based on what they have learned in the discussion.
The learners then have to think of a similar situation from their own experience, and write 5 more sentences about that in the ‘Go’ column. When all the groups have finished doing this, they then share their findings with the class.
Discover other ways teachers have suggested using images in class.