Crowded Response Creates Confusion

People say to me, "I live in Four District." They live in District Four.

I correct people simply by repeating edited/modified/revised versions of what they say. This is an example. They say to me, "I live in Four District." I respond with, "I live in District Four." I say what they say in different ways with different words. There are different ways of saying things. There are multiple ways of saying things correctly in the English language.

As an American English Teacher, I correct people like a father corrects a disobedient son. As a workaholic, I work, think, and talk more (especially as I teach English to students who may not be able to handle the excess of words that I throw at them). As a perfectionist, I continue to try to redo my English lessons, what I say, what I do, how I think, and stuff. So, to make a long story short, I end up becoming more busy in my life, which adds pressure to my teaching methods/style.

Today, in a class, as I corrected a 21 year-old female Vietnamese student, she said that she was confused and was not understanding what I was saying or asking exactly.

We talked for over an hour today about these things and I came to a more personal conclusion that I need to be more simple in what I say, in how I act, in the lessons, in what I teach, in how I teach, and especially in how much I throw at students and others.

Today, I was correcting what she was saying but she didn't know that I was correcting them because I didn't say that I was correcting them.

Like as seen in the above sentence, if you say "Four District" and I say "District Four," you might not know that I am correcting you. You could say "What is your number phone?" and I could revise it with "What is your phone number?"

However, I am learning that I need to be more sensitive with students. I want to make sure students can follow me and catch my drift.

I give people overcrowded responses mixed with different things that confuses people.

Sometimes, I respond to people with these four things:

1. I repeat their ideas to them
2. I summarize
3. I fix grammar/sentence/spelling
4. I add additional data and/or questions




If a student says a wrong question or statement, then I may just correct them by sharing the correct sentence with the student, but then I may give them around five or more correct related sentences which can confuse people because it becomes harder to understand.

I should try harder to tell people only one thing at a time.