Senna's English skills: was he a winner?

Ayrton Senna’s recently released documentary is definitely worth every minute of waiting in the ticketing line. It is a tribute to his career with exciting images and parts of his story that many people my age didn’t know about. It feels really good to watch him winning again. All car race fans, don't miss it and prepare the spirit: it'll be hard to hold back the tears when you watch Senna waving the Brazilian flag again!

But as any English teacher, I couldn’t help but notice his language skills… Let's put it this way: I had expected more. It kind of surprised me because I knew of Senna’s wealthy background (it was the 80's, not many people were able to afford language classes) and the fact that he had lived abroad many years before joining Formula 1. I’m afraid I have to say that I was kind of disappointed at the extent of his language abilities.
Senna's language abilities got me thinking about communicative, sociolinguistic and strategic competences. Why didn't Ayrton work on his English? That’s not a really difficult question, is it? He didn’t work on improving his language skills just because he didn’t need to. His abilities took him everywhere and he was more than able to express himself in his second language. As we can see in the film, Senna was able to get his ideas across in all kinds of situations, including very stressful ones and the fact that he was a true communicator helped as well. The film shows a polemic interview that Senna gave to a well-known sports journalist named Jackie Stewart, and despite the tricky question Ayrton was asked, he was perfectly able to give him a piece of his mind - in plain English. His communicative competence was great at that moment and I wish I were as concise and assertive as he managed to be. Oh yes, he was a winner.

If Senna managed to communicate successfully in English despite those shortcomings– that maybe wouldn’t call your attention if you hadn’t read this – why do we correct students over and over in the classroom? Once a student told me that he felt he was constantly disappointing me because of all the mistakes he made –and which I fast to spot every time. Is this overcorrection stopping students from communicating freely and more naturally? I’m sure that overcorrecting is a common classroom problem that every teacher reflects upon every now and then. But, at the end of the day, we end up correcting students anyways, don't we? After watching Senna and Prost racing in Japan once again last night, I’ll think twice before driving into a student at a corner again. I got the feeling that those racers' disappointment might be familiar to learners as well.