ESL Article: Errors, Mistakes, And Slips

Hi everyone, in this post you will find a very interesting topic in the ELT field; the difference between errors, mistakes, and slips. Also, you will find some recommendations when facing these three different 'stages' of learning English.

Previously, I posted about the role of correction when teaching English. However, we as teachers do not know when our students are really having problems with a word, or when they are struggling with a grammar point, or even if they understood what we explained to them.

First of all, we need to know what an error is, what a mistake is, and what a slip is.

-Error-
An error is defined as a bad decision made by the student. Nevertheless, it is not intentionally. Errors occur when students have not aced a particular aspect of the language. For instance: when someone says He play soccer everyday. the message for us is very clear, however, that student needs to master adding the 's' for the third person when using the simple present.

-Mistake-
A mistake is made when a student says something grammatically incorrect or when his / her syntax is not in the correct order, and right away he / she says it, he / she corrects the mistake. This is a very common situation in our daily basis; we have students that want to speak so fast that they are always mixing tenses and changing the order of the words. We do not have to worry about mistakes, because they are corrected by the students themselves.

-Slip-
This is defined as an 'accident'. This is to say, it is not big deal. They do not receive too much attention because they are also corrected in further situations. Slips appear mainly at speaking activities, and remember, most of the speaking practice in the classroom should be focused on fluency rather than accuracy.

Now, by keeping this in mind, we came to the conclusion that only when errors appear, it is time for correction. Thus, we avoid the fossilization of them, and we shape our students' language skills. Also, let your students know that making mistakes/errors/slips is part of the learning process and they should not be ashamed of that.

I hope you could find this useful for your teaching practice.