Errors mostly come from items learners have met too few times to know their co-text, not from missing rules. Correction is just more priming, so ‘prevention is infinitely desirable to cure’.
Claim
Learners use new items creatively from thin priming, often an L1 prime. The task itself often creates the errors by demanding language learners haven’t met enough.
Procedures
- Weekly chunk dictation (Andrew Walkley’s practice): record ~50 chunks or collocations (Vocaroo), send the link; students write them down as a dictation, then write sentences showing how they’d use or hear each one. The teacher reformulates by email.
- In class, reformulate on the board: rework learners’ sentences into natural English without a rule lecture.
- Treat grammar correction as “a condensed and more focused part of the priming process”.
Limits
Correction won’t produce correct use immediately. Error sources vary with L1 and reading exposure. No study cited.
Apply in my context (Claude)
- Weekly chunk dictation via Telegram voice notes is a zero-cost IELTS homework routine. It recycles lexis (spacing) and gives you written output to reformulate.
- Design tasks so learners need only language they’ve met ≥ several times. This is the same principle as How many new words per lesson - working memory limits.
Connections
Errors are often developmental, not L1 transfer (the contrasting view) · Error correction - types of error and a response sequence · Round-ups, gapped boardwork and reformulation