"Nobody corrects my mistakes"
What to do if you don't have anybody to help you fix your mistakes
Sometimes people ask me, “How can I improve my English when I have nobody to correct my mistakes?” Maybe they think it’s impossible to improve their English unless somebody is correcting their mistakes all the time.
It’s great if you have somebody to help you with your mistakes but it’s still possible for you to make progress without this. Actually, there are lots of things you can do on your own to improve your English, such as reading, watching videos, writing a journal or chatting on social media. But in this post, I want to focus on the issue of correcting mistakes.
Lessons
If you’re serious about learning English, you might want to consider joining a class or finding a teacher. You can learn a lot on your own but you’ll probably make progress faster with a bit of help. However, I know this isn’t possible for everybody. You might not have the time or the money at the moment.
If you do have lessons, you need to understand that a teacher isn’t actually going to correct all of your mistakes all the time. If you’re in a class, you might practise speaking with a partner and the teacher can’t listen to everyone at once. Some students worry that they will copy and learn their partner’s mistakes but don’t worry! I’ve never seen this happen!
Even if you have one-to-one lessons, the teacher probably won’t correct every error. A good teacher will choose what the most important mistakes are and help you fix those. Also, improving your speaking is about a lot more than just working on fixing your mistakes. You will never develop your fluency if the teacher interrupts you every time you make a mistake.
Native speakers
Some people say that they need a native speaker to talk to and they can’t improve their English without this. Some of you might get the chance to practise your English with a native speaker but a lot of you won’t. That’s OK. Practising with non-native speakers is still good practice because it helps you build your confidence and fluency.
Actually, talking to native speakers might not be as helpful as you might imagine. First, people who are not teachers might feel uncomfortable about correcting you. Even if you ask them to correct your mistakes, they probably won’t want to because it doesn’t feel polite!
Also, if you’re having a conversation and enjoying it, the other person will be focused on what you’re saying and not on whether you’re saying it correctly. I’m an experienced teacher and even I sometimes get so involved in an interesting conversation that I almost forget my students want me to help them with their errors!
Another thing you need to understand is that a native speaker might be able to tell you what’s correct or incorrect but they probably won’t be able to explain why. For example, I didn’t learn the rules about “will” and “going to” or the present perfect and past simple until I trained to be an English teacher. Native speakers know what sounds better but not why because we don’t learn our first language by studying grammar rules.
No feedback IS feedback!
In education, “feedback” means telling the other person what they are doing well and what they need to do better. In real-life conversation, people don’t correct your mistakes all the time but they do actually give you feedback without realising it.
If you ask somebody a question and their answer is not what you expect, perhaps you got the question wrong (although of course there might be another reason that’s not your fault). On the other hand, if the conversation is going smoothly, then you are obviously speaking clearly and understanding the other person correctly. This IS positive feedback, even if the other person doesn’t actually tell you that your English is correct.
Self-correction
You can actually correct your own mistakes. I can think of two ways you could do this. You could try writing something today and then look at it again tomorrow and see if there’s anything you need to change. You are very likely to see things that you missed the day before.
You can also record yourself speaking using your phone and then listen to the recording. You’ll probably notice things that you could have said differently.
If you keep some of your recording and pieces of writing a bit longer, continue to study English in a variety of ways, then go back to your earlier work, you’ll be able to go back and see even more mistakes because you’re learning all the time.
Other tools
Finally, there are websites and apps which you can use to ask people questions. Nobody will want to correct an entire essay for free but you can write a sentence and ask if it’s correct. Try HiNative, italki or Facebook groups.
If you use Google docs or Microsoft Word to write, make sure you turn the spelling checker on. Or you can turn it off before you write and then turn it on again to review what you’ve written. You can also use Grammarly as a tool to correct your mistakes.
Artificial Intelligence is another way to get corrections. You can ask ChatGPT to correct your mistakes. Cambridge University Press and Assessment has a free tool called Write & Improve.
Be careful though. None of the tools I’ve just mentioned is perfect. Sometimes they’ll tell you things are wrong when they are actually OK and sometimes they’ll miss mistakes and not correct them. They are not a perfect substitute for a human being helping you but they are better than nothing.
I hope you found something helpful in this post! Feel free to let me know in the comments.
Have a great day and see you next week!
Katie
PS Thanks for reading my Substack post! I’m Katie Salter and I teach British English online.
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Definetely agree with yours sugestion. As i experienced in the past I thought that i need someone to help me to correct my mistakes when i spoke with him, and they told me that you dont need it. Then they let me speak as i can. And by the time i got my confidence.
Great tips on how to deal with correction and feedback whilst learning a second language. As teachers we have to gauge when to cut in and correct vs when to let the conversation flow to gain fluency and confidence, an interesting balance.