Getting rid of recurring mistakes

[Cherokee]

Dear experts,

please suggest some ideas how to eradicate habitual mistakes.

 

I also would like you to suggest how to make a passive vocabulary become an active vocabulary

[Алексей Конобеев]

Dear experts,

please suggest some ideas how to eradicate habitual mistakes.

 

I also would like you to suggest how to make a passive vocabulary become an active vocabulary

I think thatgetting rid of habitual mistakes is difficult for two reasons. First, they are made because the speaker is unaware of them and makes them automatically. For example, a friend of mine who has been living in the USA for the last 8 years still says "avtomatic" instead of "automatic" and for some reason seems to be quite oblivious to the fact that this is not how the word shold be pronounced. in this case it is mimportant to first of all tell the speaker where and why he is wrong, and then it's up to the speaker to try and be very carefull to avoid making the same mistakes again.

The second reason, I believe, is that although the speaker is fully aware of his/her mistakes, he either does not care or does not notice the mistakes before he/she has made them. After all, while it is a set mistake, which means that the speaker makes it automatically, without really thinking. So what I'd recommend here is some error-correction exercises, that is, exercises aimed at helping the learner to identify and correct this mistake. Thus, if somebody (let's take a very common mistake here) forgets to add the ending S when putting the verb in the third person singular form, I'd give plenty of exercises where he/she would need to find out these mistakes (among some other which would serve as distractors) and correct them. I believe that if a learner brings a mistake from the subconscious up to the conscious level, it will be easier to learn to avoid it in speech or writing.