Asian competitiveness

In language teaching classes, German students tend to see that it makes sense to use different form of correction such as teacher-correction, peer-correction or self-correction. Of the three, peer-correction tends to be the less popular. A Korean student, during an oral exam, made reference to this distinction and immediately said what her preference was: peer-correction. This, she said, was “competitive”. I could not help thinking of this is terms of cultural prejudice. On the other hand, there was one thing where the Korean student coincided with her German counterparts: the belief that correction is useful and necessary. Although the point of the lecture was that it is usually neither. One does not necessarily learn by being corrected and one does not mainly learn by being corrected. This insight is not apt to undermine cherished beliefs about language learning.

 

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