TO CORRECT OR NOT TO CORRECT, THAT IS NOT THE QUESTION (REPRINTED FROM JOURNAL IMMERSION, VOL 15, 1991)

If we accept the premise that every utterance produced by a second language learner contains a certain quantity of non native forms (if only at the pronunciation level), we can appreciate the number of more or less spontaneous decisions that have to be made by a teacher in terms of WHO and WHAT should be corrected as well as of WHEN and HOW it should be done. This article suggests some guidelines in answering these questions, taking into account the relative value of the concept of "error" (according to the various norms that can be transgressed), the different types of errors, the possible teaching objectives and the relative efficiency of various correcting techniques as established by systematic observations.