The best way to teach - whether as an educator, employer or parent - is to praise positive actions and ignore negative ones.
The best way to teach - whether as an educator, employer or parent - is to praise positive actions and ignore negative ones.
Every person continuously learns throughout her life and most of the time there is someone who helps with this process, someone like a parent, teacher, or employer. There is a plethora of approaches to teaching and the prompt argues that praising positive actions while ignoring the negative ones is the best approach. I mildly disagree with this claim: while there are reasons why this could be true, I am convinced that there are better approaches that would allow learning more effectively.
Probably the most persuasive reason why one may think that ignoring errors is a good idea is that it helps to keep the student motivated. Indeed, constantly getting negative feedback on your work can discourage a person from trying to achieve a better result. If all you hear is criticism, it is harder to continue learning compared to the situation when you hear only positive feedback on your work. Hearing praising comments may encourage you to do more exercises and work harder to achieve even better results.
However, this is not a dichotomy, it is not like you are either only being praised or only frown upon. There is an alternative: the teacher can praise all successes and simultaneously acknowledge some errors. It is not necessary to punish for the errors, it’s enough to specify what they are. This approach would give a lot more information to the studying person. Consider an example where a pupil learns how to write. If the pupil writes some words wrong every time, it will be very hard for him to guess what the error is if all the information he has is a lack of praise for certain words. It would be much easier for the pupil to correct the error if the teacher would just point out what is wrong with the word. Thus, acknowledging mistakes would make learning a lot faster while not impairing motivation.
Ignoring errors also makes it harder to notice that there is an error in the first place. For instance, if a new employee forgets to do part of her job responsibilities, there is essentially no way for her to find out about this error unless someone reminds her about this part of her job. Also, ignoring some problems may not only leave them unsolved but also make them worse. If the teacher does not correct her student’s pronunciation, the student can form a bad habit of pronouncing the word in the wrong way, and it can be very hard to get rid of such a habit.
All things considered, praising successful actions while ignoring unsuccessful ones may be an excellent strategy from the motivational point of view, but errors provide so much information that it would be wrong to just ignore them. Acknowledging negative actions is an important part of education, so just ignoring them may impair education speed and even quality.
- We learn the most valuable lessons in life from struggling with our limitations rather than from enjoying our successes 50
- It is no longer possible for a society to regard any living man or woman as a hero 54
- As people rely more and more on technology to solve problems the ability of humans to think for themselves will surely deteriorate 62
- The best way to teach whether as an educator employer or parent is to praise positive actions and ignore negative ones 66
- Memorandum from the business manager of a television station 58
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, may, so, thus, while, for instance, in the first place
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 29.0 19.5258426966 149% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.4196629213 137% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 14.8657303371 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 11.3162921348 88% => OK
Pronoun: 45.0 33.0505617978 136% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 46.0 58.6224719101 78% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 12.9106741573 70% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2401.0 2235.4752809 107% => OK
No of words: 498.0 442.535393258 113% => OK
Chars per words: 4.82128514056 5.05705443957 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.72397222731 4.55969084622 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.66033005471 2.79657885939 95% => OK
Unique words: 240.0 215.323595506 111% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.481927710843 0.4932671777 98% => OK
syllable_count: 746.1 704.065955056 106% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59117977528 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 6.24550561798 160% => OK
Article: 2.0 4.99550561798 40% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 3.10617977528 129% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.77640449438 169% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.38483146067 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 20.2370786517 109% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 23.0359550562 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 43.8742803854 60.3974514979 73% => OK
Chars per sentence: 109.136363636 118.986275619 92% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.6363636364 23.4991977007 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.86363636364 5.21951772744 74% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 4.97078651685 121% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 7.80617977528 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 10.2758426966 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 5.13820224719 195% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.83258426966 41% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.288621601587 0.243740707755 118% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0932438768951 0.0831039109588 112% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.16604663873 0.0758088955206 219% => The coherence between sentences is low.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.225170886319 0.150359130593 150% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.244107470428 0.0667264976115 366% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.6 14.1392134831 89% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 57.61 48.8420337079 118% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.92365168539 111% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.1743820225 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.97 12.1639044944 90% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.96 8.38706741573 95% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 100.480337079 102% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 11.8971910112 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.2143820225 96% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.7820224719 93% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 54.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.25 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.