An Error in Teaching


Last Wednesday a senior assistant observed me and to make my lesson more interesting, I asked my students to translate two Malay paragraphs into English. A Bidayuh girl, who is a top student,  translated a sentence 'Jenayah melampaui batas politik dan sosial' as ' Crime transcends politics and society' and I marked her wrong, saying that the word 'politics' should be written as 'politic'. Before I asked one more student to translate I quickly realised my error and apologized. The senior assistant smiled and said nothing to reprimand me after the observation. I would have been reprimanded if it was my Ketua Bidang who observed me. Sometimes I am prone to making uncharacteristic errors.

Comments

suituapui said…
Yes, we do make slips sometimes and we do not know everything. Sometimes, my students would point them out to me - I would correct myself...or if it was something I had to confirm, I would go and check it up and get back to the guy...and highlight what was right, and thank the student(s) for drawing my attention to it.

Some teachers would throw tantrums and insist they are right - a sign of lack of self-confidence and little self-respect. It you are good, you know you are good - there is nothing to prove...and the students will respect you all the more for it, the fact that you are human after all and not infallible.

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