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From http://asiasociety.org/china-learning-initiatives/weeding-out-errors-helps-language-bloom

Weeding Out Errors Helps Language Bloom
by Heather Clydesdale

Cultivating high achievement depends on the patient efforts of teachers who are willing to get down in the weeds, so to speak. This is especially true when teaching Chinese as a foreign language, since students’ speech and writing are often marred by misplaced conventions and peculiar errors.

These mistakes are understandable. American students are exposed to English through movies, games, music, as well as interactions in public and at home. Chinese input, meanwhile, is commonly limited to the teacher’s speech and classroom materials. Without correction, students invent alien patterns. As they hear one another repeat them, they begin to think they are normal features of the language, and soon the errors take root like an invasive species of plant. Four teachers, Jing Zhao, Ping Peng, and Qingling Yang from Scenic Heights Elementary, along with Zou Ting at Excelsior Elementary, observed this phenomenon and sought to correct errors while nurturing accepted conventions.

Read what these teachers have discovered about effective corrective feedback: http://asiasociety.org/china-learning-initiatives/weeding-out-errors-helps-language-bloom