Articles, strategies, and insights — for teachers, by teachers.
Originally published 2015 by Kevin Stein on iTDi.pro. Updated May 2026. March is almost over. When it ends, so officially ends the school year here in Japan as well. Which means that tests have been marked, desks wiped down, and
Originally published 2012 by Cecilia Lemos Harmer on iTDi.pro. Updated May 2026. What Linguists Mean by “Error” — And Why the Distinction Matters What is an error, when we’re talking about language learning? According to Paul Lennon (1991) “a linguistic
Originally published 2012 by Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto. Updated May 2026. Young learners are geniuses at discovering patterns. They construct an implicit understanding of grammar from the language chunks they hear in class. They refine their understanding through trial and error…and
Originally published in 2012 by Steven Herder on iTDi.pro. Updated May 2026. Over the past 23 years, I’ve taken a number of approaches to error correction, and my current ideas are pretty indicative of how my teacher beliefs have grown
Originally published 2016 by John Pfordresher on iTDi.pro. Updated May 2026. Iteratively Driven Error Correction As with other teaching and classroom management techniques, I find error correction to be an iterative process of experimentation. By keeping records of (1) the
Originally published in 2012 by Yitzha Sarwono Boon on iTDi.pro. Updated May 2026. What are language errors? Well, the definition may be a bit blurry just as it may be a bit technical, but we can say they’re often mistakes