Error correction techniques in the context of teaching an esp course at a technical university

The article studies the practice of applying various correction methods in the process of teaching English to future specialists in the field of information technology at a technological university. The study, conducted in the form of a questionnaire survey of students’ opinions concerning their attitude to error correction is aimed at drawing attention to this issue; increasing participants’ awareness of the existing correction methods; identifying the differences in teachers’ approach to correcting students’ oral mistakes and finding the most “working” methods in a particular learning context. The target competence of future IT specialists is the ability to communicate in oral and written forms in a foreign language, to solve problems of interpersonal and intercultural interaction, speak a foreign language at the level of social and professional communication, to be able to use special vocabulary and professional terminology. In the authors` teaching context the individualized approach is of particular importance. It means varying the level of complexity of materials and evaluation criteria and approaches to correcting errors. Based on the results of the study and the teaching situation we focus on the following methods to correct mistakes in the students’ speech: immediate correction; self-evaluation or self-correction ; the task repetition method and the teacher’s positive feedback.