ELTeaching Tip: focus less on the answers, and more on how students got there

ELTeaching Tip: focus less on the answers, and more on how students got there

This tip applies to receptive skills lessons, but can also be relevant in some feedback to language-focused exercises.

Apart from where teachers use literature and poetry, most texts from course books are ephemeral, soon to be forgotten about.

The answers don’t really matter. What matters is students’ route to the answers.

This is something that can best be explored before the answer to a question is confirmed. It’s always worth revisiting the text to dig a bit deeper; or replaying a section of audio just one more time to help find out more about how the student is processing the signal. Telling students the answers brings this interesting process to an end.

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