"I am a Grade 2 teacher, and I have a new ELL student in my class. She makes a LOT of grammar/speech mistakes, so I've been correcting her when she does to help her learn, but now she doesn't really communicate at all anymore... any advice on this?"
Answer: I have to be honest with you here - I feel like part (if not most) of the reason she has given up on communicating with you is because she feels discouraged and has sort of “given up.” Think about it - how would you feel if you kept trying and trying and trying to learn something and all you ever heard from the other person was all of the things you were doing wrong? You probably wouldn’t feel too excited about trying again, and eventually you would just give up entirely and move on to something you were actually good at. I think this student needs to hear some positive encouragement from you - you need to focus on what she is doing GREAT at, instead of only telling her the things she needs to work on. That being said, of course it is okay to correct her every now and again (after all, she wants to learn!), and it is especially okay to correct her when she makes a simple mistake that is easy for her to understand how to fix it, but with those corrections should also come a “great job though on _____,” so that she knows she is still making great progress. It is important to remember that, in general, children are able to acquire language naturally with little or no overt teaching, so you don’t have to put too much pressure on yourself as her teacher to always be fixing her mistakes, lest she learn something wrong - after all, making mistakes should be encouraged and welcomed, as is a vital part of the learning journey (so you don’t want her to start feeling afraid of making a mistake!). I hope this helps you going forward - and I’m sure she’ll start participating again in no time!
(*PLEASE NOTE: This question as well as the response was created and written by me for my “Teaching ELLs - Part 1″ AQ course)