What to do about fossilization?

Tutors and learners alike can become frustrated by errors that continue to occur over and over again.  What to do about fossilization?   Traditional routes of correction won’t do the trick because they haven’t so far. 
ESL methodologist Jeremy Harmer suggests developing critical faculties in students to recognize their own errors.  Suggestions:

• Ask students to write something that will elicit the errors.  Compare with a correct writing.  Have you written it in the same way? 
• Dictogloss – Hear a short text and recreate – compare with the script – are they the same?
• Can you find examples of someone else who has written the same kind of thing?   
• Analyze how text is constructed.  Is yours like this?
• Make a list of what they will evaluate before doing the task.  Check the writing/oral recording so they learn to recognize the errors they are prone to.   
• Collect a list of their own typical errors and check the list every time they write something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1cz-8n9DGk&feature=youtu.be

Manners!

We had a great Conversation Circle last week on the topic of manners.  Much etiquette is the same across cultures but some things are interestingly different.  Examples that came up:  honking your horn while driving, bowing to elders, chewing with your mouth open, using first names for teachers, etc.  We all came up with pet peeves, such as texting at the table, cell phones in theatres...
A couple of great ESL Youtube videos on this subject are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-8AlriF908

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBSLIy3SmCQ

 

For discussion questions, see  http://iteslj.org/questions/manners.html

It proved to be a popular topic for newcomers!