Feedback as Teaching Artistry

Should teachers correct every mistake their learners make?

It sounds like a simple question, but Tatiana Terekhova’s recent workshop showed why the answer is much more interesting than a simple yes or no.

Her starting point was deliberately provocative: the suggestion that teachers who do not correct every learner error are somehow failing to do their job. Instead of simply rejecting that claim, Tatiana invited participants to examine their own beliefs and classroom choices.

How strict are you about mistakes? When do you correct? When do you wait? Who should do the correcting — the teacher, the learner, or their peers?

Very quickly, the discussion revealed an important principle: effective feedback depends on context.

If learners are completing an accuracy-focused grammar task, immediate correction may be useful. If they are trying to develop fluency, constantly interrupting them may do more harm than good. Age, level, confidence, the lesson aim and the nature of the task can all influence the decision.

This is where error correction becomes directly relevant to Teaching Artistry.

Teaching is a series of choices

The artistic teacher does not simply apply a fixed rule.

They notice.

They interpret.

And then they choose.

A learner makes a mistake during a conversation. The teacher could interrupt immediately, make a note for later, encourage self-correction, invite a peer to help, recast the sentence, provide a clue — or perhaps decide that this particular mistake does not need attention at all.

None of these choices is automatically the “correct” one.

The important question is:

What will best support learning at this moment?

Teaching Artistry lives in these small professional decisions.

Mistakes are evidence of learning

One of the strongest ideas running through the workshop was that mistakes do not have to be treated as failures.

They are evidence that learners are experimenting with language.

This changes the emotional climate of the classroom.

If every attempt is immediately interrupted and corrected, learners may gradually become more concerned with avoiding mistakes than with communicating.

Tatiana demonstrated this with an intentionally exaggerated example. A learner tried to speak freely while the teacher interrupted repeatedly to correct grammar and word choice.

The result was technically attentive teaching — almost every mistake was noticed — but the conversation itself was being destroyed.

Participants quickly recognised the problem.

The goal is not to notice less.

It is to decide more carefully what deserves attention now, what can wait, and what may not need correcting at all.

The learner is not a passive recipient

Another important idea emerged when participants discussed learners who insist:

“Please correct all my mistakes.”

It can be tempting simply to comply.

But Tatiana suggested another possibility: explain the learning process.

Teachers can tell learners why they may correct some mistakes immediately, save others for delayed feedback, or sometimes prioritise communication instead.

This reflects a central principle of Teaching Artistry: learners are participants in the learning process, not passive objects of teacher decisions.

When learners understand why teachers make particular choices, feedback becomes something done with them rather than to them.

Beyond correction

Perhaps the most useful shift in the workshop came when Tatiana moved from error correction to feedback.

Feedback is much broader than:

“That’s wrong.”

It can also ask:

What did you do successfully?

What helped you complete the task?

What could make your performance even more effective next time?

Tatiana introduced the idea of using success criteria based on lesson aims. If learners are practising storytelling, for example, feedback might focus on whether they used narrative tenses, sequencing expressions, appropriate vocabulary and clear organisation.

The lesson aim therefore becomes something learners themselves can use to reflect:

Did I do this?

Did I achieve that?

What still needs work?

This moves feedback away from judgement and towards awareness.

Feedback as an act of attention

This may be the strongest connection with Teaching Artistry.

Feedback begins with attention.

The teacher listens not simply for errors, but for development.

What is this learner trying to do?

What is working?

What is getting in the way?

What feedback will help without damaging confidence, fluency or willingness to communicate?

The skilled teacher does not correct everything simply because they can hear everything.

They make choices.

Sometimes they intervene.

Sometimes they wait.

Sometimes they encourage learners to help one another.

And sometimes the most useful response is simply to let the conversation continue.

Teaching Artistry is often found in exactly these moments — in knowing not only how to act, but when.

Perhaps the question is therefore not:

“Did I correct all the mistakes?”

A more useful question might be:

“Did my feedback help this learner move forward?”

That is a very different way of thinking about correction.

And it is much closer to the art of teaching.