Mistakes Made by a Group of Albanian Students of English during their Classroom Oral Interactions

Abstract

In oral interactions, if the main aim is to communicate, then errors mustn’t be corrected exhaustively, otherwise the communication flow will be broken. In other words, if the message is understood, only the errors that constitute an impediment to the effectiveness of communication should be corrected. Oral interaction in the classroom is very important, because sometimes it is the only opportunity for students to use the foreign language. Thus being the case, teachers will have to plan activities that enable students to practice their communicative intentions applied to different contexts. When a student starts learning a foreign language, he/she already possesses some rules in his/her unconscious. Those rules are used naturally in our mother tongue. However, in a foreign language, this is an artificial process, requiring an abstraction from our native language and/or culture. Moreover, the knowledge of other languages may lead students to make wrong inferences. Also, one must not forget that written language implies an organization different from that of spoken language. In writing, logic and coherence are essential for communication, whereas in speaking, this may compensate the eventual gaps with paralanguage, which renders communication much more efficient. As teachers, we very often forget that students’ only chance to communicate in a foreign language is inside the classroom. Outside it, they tend to use the foreign language to listen to songs, to play computer games, and sometimes in chat-rooms.

Keywords: mistakes, errors, classroom oral interactions, FLL, recasts, Albanian students, etc.