KINDS OF ERRORS

Errors are different from mistakes (allwright 1991:91). A student generally makes mistakes when writing or speaking, because of the lack of attention, focus, fatigue, or being careless. Error can be fixed by the student himself (self- corrected) when he realizes his mistakes. Error is the using of linguistic form which shows mistake that is not realized by a non native speaker and cannot be fixed by himself. It is also shows an incomplete learning.

Allwright (1991, 81):
error in language learning is the production of linguistic form which is different from the correct one.
The right form refers to a native speaker. Error is connected to behavioristic theory which states that learning is the proses of acquiring language which is habitual, therefore error is stated as a habitual of mother tongue language which influences the new language which is being studied (Mitchell 1998, 13) 

CLASS MUSIC DISCUSSION

One of my PTK was to make a discussion about music lyrics. I asked my students to find lyrics, each of them had to find their favorite lyric. After that, we made a discussion. In this activity I tried to get their contribution in doing discussion. It was an active discussion because they talked about lyric that they liked and then every of them tried to make some comments about their friends' lyrics. I monitored the discussion and made some notes about it. I compared with the activity before using lyric I had given to them. It was different. In this case we need knowledge about music and lyrics. I liked music and lyrics but these day I don't get myself up to date to those, but I still tried to keep my track on their discussion.

CORRECTION IN READING 2

The other things you can do after your students finish reading the text is asking questions about what inside the text. For example asking for some spesific informations. Student in their reading can make some highlights of some informations. While answering our questions students may look at the text again to give exact answer like it is written, but they can also give the red line of the answers. It means they don't need to memorize or give the answer exactly the same, but with their own words. If they can give the answers with their own words it means, we can say that, they understand what they are talking about. We should give a time or moment for them while they are trying to give answers. We give them time to think first before speaking.

CORRECTION IN READING

Making correction in reading is complicated. It depends on what purpose the student (reader) has when he is reading a text. One thing we can take from reading is that a student must know the general idea of the text or the main idea of every paragraph in a text. Then the question is, how to check their reading? We, as teachers can ask some questions to our students as soon as they finish reading. Of course they can make some highlights on their important points in the text. Then if there is a mistake so that we do some corrections.
How to correct their work? We have to give knowledge about what is general idea and is main idea, and how to reach both of them. We can make our correction through their text (written correction) or we just tell their mistakes orally. Hope they learn someting from it.    

CORRECTION IN SPEAKING

There are some corrections that we can do while checking our students' speaking. When they are speaking, we need to make some responses, it could be a statement or instruction so that our students will know exactly the mistakes, if there is a mistake. But before that, we need to identify the individual characteristics about our students. We need to make a good decision in correcting (checking) their speaking so that it won't contra-productive in the future. Contra-productive means that they won't be afraid to speak again in the future. It's hoped that it would bring encouragement to them in speaking.
These are some ways in correcting (checking) students' speaking:

When student say:
"I been there twice"

Our responses:

You wrong!
Hello?!?
What, been?
Good, I have been there twice
Would you reply?
It's a mistake
don't say that, say "I have been there twice"

There are many more ways to response, but we need to be carefull to find the right way to check their speaking. Everybody is different.

ACTION RESEARH

Action Research or in Indonesian we said "PTK", is an activity that is done by teacher to find a better way in class studying process. So the teacher has to be a researcher. Some people said that action research has to be done with other teachers as co-researcher, but in my opinion, the teacher alone can do research by himself. A teacher can use his diary to write anything that happens in the class. A teacher can use camera to record all activities in the class. A teacher can use questioner or written test which is filled by students. Those are the things that a teacher can use to make some research in order to improve his students' ability, alone by himself.