EnglishClub TEFL Forums (archived)

hi there
I recently started to teach English so I'm green in this job. last week I explained a word wrongly and I realized that after my class. I know I have to let them know but at the same time I don't want to lose their trust!
any suggestion?

You have to tell them you made the mistake. If you don't and the students find out that you did it on their own you will appear incompetent.
However, if you start your next class by saying "Listen guys, I made a mistake last time" and go on to explain what it was, how you did it and, most of all, why the answer you give is correct, the impression will be totally different. The students will know you are in control, you can reflect upon your work and that you are only human after all You can gain their respect this way.

I know this was posted a long time ago, but maybe it will help a future reader. I don't even think you should frame it as a mistake. By all means tell them what you said was wrong, but just say, "hey I was thinking more about X and I realized ..." or "I was reading Y and it talked about X, so I learned that ..." This will help you gain your students' trust because it will show them that language is a dynamic process, that is, sometimes we can change our interpretations when it is taken out of context, or the word is in a different context. It will show them that you are concerned about their learning outside of class, and make them comfortable with making their own mistakes and developing their use of the language over time. If you're a native speaker, you're a wealth of knowledge to your students, but you're not the end-all, be-all because everybody had idiosyncratic and dialectic influences on their language use. So use it as a teachable moment to show your students how much you're invested.

Hi there,
Don't worry just go to the class and correct your mistake by telling the correct word meaning.

There is nothing wrong if you accept the mistake you done in the subject in front of your students. How could you be sure all student's know about the mistake. There will be definitely few who don't know about the mistake happened by you. There won't be any trust worthy problem between student and teacher if you correct the mistake. Rather your respect increases among the student.

(This is an old thread, but I thought the discussion was interesting.)

I generally treat my mistakes a chance to model self-improvement; even the teacher does not know every English word but we are still learning!

Committing a mistake doesn't define your whole sense of being as an English teacher. Instead of feeling like losing their trust why not think of it as a lesson for everyone, tell them that whenever they also commit mistake whatever that mistake is, take their courage and tell people honestly in that way your students will also think of your mistake as alesson and not as a danger.