The plan:

Researching methods of correcting typical errors made by Ukrainian students who study English as a foreign language.
These errors are typically use of the article and preposition, also pronunciation and collocation errors which have created a specific “Ukrainian English”.
This course will focus on these types of errors, by alerting students to the error, correcting the error, and with various types of practice hopefully eliminate the error before it becomes fossilized in the students' speech.
The university has agreed for me to work with the fourth year psychology students who are studying English as their only foreign language. The class is split into 2 subgroups, group A and group B. I will work with one subgroup, the other group is the control group.
At the beginning of the course both groups will take the same test. I will work with group A once a week; group B will not participate in my course.
My work with group A will consist of fill in the blank exercises, drills, communicative games, role play and other types of activities to teach and reinforce the correct forms in the students' minds. My weekly lessons will follow the set curriculum of the group's normal English classes.
After working with the fourth year students for one year I will administer a test again to both groups to check if there is any improvement in group A in comparison to group B. If students do well on this test I would recommend giving them enough points to raise their mark one point at the end of the spring term.
If possible I would like to repeat this experiment again the next year with the next group of fourth year students.

Materials used will include:

• news articles from the internet
• various textbooks including:

1. English Prepositions for Ukrainians by A.D. Sherick
2. Speak Authentic English by D. Puffalt and V. Starko
3. English Prepositions for Ukrainians by A. D. Sherick and V. F. Starko
4. Use of the Article in English compiled by A.D. Sherick
5. Practical English Usage by Michael Swan
6. The English Article in communicative patterns by H.I. Stoudenets, Kyiv - 2006

Advice from a seasoned teacher

I was telling a friend of mine about my assignment, here are her suggestions-

Methods of correcting errors made by students learning English:

1. Carry a yard stick during the lesson, when the student makes a language error hit him with the stick.
2. When the student makes a mistake go off into gales of laughter, encourage his fellow students to do likewise.
3. While the student is reciting make a list of his incorrect utterances, after he is finished read off all his errors to the class, slowly and painstakingly explaining each one.

This being all in fun of course. (read: "The fun of the course".)  Another fun thing is I get a week extra of summer time as my boss is in Moscow til next week some time!

The Assignment

My job for the next few months is to research a method to help Ukrainian speakers of English overcome the most frequent errors they make in English. These are mostly errors of article and preposition usage.
Why blog about it? People blog about lots of stuff and find an audience. Maybe the blog will serve to inspire me in this seemingly dull and monotonous task. Also I hope it will help me to be organised in my approach as I prepare to publish my weekly lesson plan here. Perhaps I will find others who are interested in the same subject. This would make it all very interesting if we could then corraborate.
Let the fun begin!