While I respect those teachers who have such an opinion, it just doesn’t jibe with my own experiences in the classroom. I have found, in fact, that find-the-error exercises actually help student become BETTER proofreaders. It teaches them to be on the lookout for their own mistakes. Equally important is that it’s fun. The instructions announce that there are errors lurking in the sentences that follow!  Students are challenged to become detectives and find these errors. It’s a game of hide and seek! Seek the errors, and ye shall find them!   My students love these exercises. They have become much better writers and editors by doing them.

I would argue that the logic behind NOT having students do find-the-error exercises should also prohibit them from writing their own compositions until AFTER they are fluent in Spanish or French. After all, all language students will make errors when they write. Language is a system of trial and error. And if they read their own errors, won’t they be more likely to make those errors?

Nonsense, I say!  Just listen to little children speaking their native language. They say and write down TONS of errors, but, in time, they learn what is correct. It is truly a system of trial and error.

In any case, Step Four of a well-organized class is addressing the homework you have assigned. Homework should not be ignored! You can’t assign homework and then do nothing with it. It just isn’t fair! Going over homework sounds so simple………..and as many teachers the world over know all too well, you can go over homework one sentence at a time. You ask for a volunteer. That student reads the correct answer aloud. You repeat, praise the student, and ask for a volunteer for question number two. This student also gets it right. You praise her, and ask for a new volunteer. He makes a mistake. You ask for another volunteer, and that student gets it right. You praise her, ask the student who made an error if he understands, and then onto question four. This student gets it right, etc., etc., etc.  All set.

Wait a minute!  You know where this will end up. You are going to go over twenty or twenty-five or thirty fill-in-the-blank answers. Time is ticking away as you move to the bottom of last night’s assignment. You finish and are ready to move on to Step Five. Right?

Well, no. I believe that, in general, this is the worst way to go over homework. After ten minutes, how much Spanish has been heard? How often has each student spoken?  If you, in fact, had presented the new material well and your textbook explained the grammar thoroughly, these exercises generally should have been quite simple for your students. You had set them up to succeed even BEFORE they did the assignment.

Why spend so many minutes going over these sentences one-by-one? Perhaps you haven’t prepared your lesson plan well. Maybe you need to kill time. I confess that this has happened to me MANY times. I can EASILY go over the homework for ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes. I ask for volunteers to write their answers on the blackboard (just as my old high school Spanish teacher did!). That takes extra time! I crack jokes. I ask the student to read the FULL sentence instead of just the answer. I repeat the FULL sentence as well as the answer. I walk to the blackboard. I walk back to my desk. I pull out colored pieces of chalk. Does this sound familiar?

Well it works at the time. But when class ends, I feel guilty. I look in the mirror and say to myself: “I will NEVER do that again!” Until, of course, I am not well-prepared for class and need to KILL time (and everyone’s interest in Spanish) by going over the homework this way.

Look, most of your students already have the right answers. Certainly the ones who put in a little effort do. If students know you are going to go over each and every sentence slowly, they don’t need to spend time doing the exercises carefully on their own. You are doing their work for them!

What should you do instead?

I recommend handing out the answers and having students correct their own exercises in class. Put the answers up on the blackboard or on an overhead. It’s fast. It’s more effective.

Now pick four, five or six of the most challenging questions and go over them in great detail. When you’ve finished, ask your students if they still have questions. This is the perfect moment to encourage a shy student, asking him or her for a suggestion.

But, in fact, I think the best solution may be to give your students all the answers BEFORE they do the assignment. Give them an answer key or e-mail it to them.  Let them check their work as they go along. If they get stuck, having the correct answers helps them understand.

What can I say, though, to those teachers who worry that students will just copy the correct answers?  I honestly feel that this is not a legitimate worry because students need to be ready for the tests and quizzes anyway. If they haven’t done the practice all along the way, they will have difficulties with tests. It’s as simple as that. If a few students choose to take shortcuts, it doesn’t bother me. They better be ready, however, for the tests and quizzes. If they can ace the tests and quizzes, three cheers for them.

Occasionally a topic will arise that is problematic for students, such as if clauses, the imperfect subjunctive or relative clauses. For those assignments, you may just want to go over every single sentence in class. You may want to do this even if the students all know what the correct answers are. Seeing the answers again, and having the teacher explain the underlying logic of each answer, may help students cement their new knowledge.

But PLEASE do this judiciously. I truly believe that WAY too much time is spent in language classrooms going over homework.  Dedicate only a few minutes to……..and mark in your grade book who hasn’t done the homework. If students run into trouble, your record of their homework will help set the record straight!

But now it’s time to move on.