Question for teachers

When you are teaching students a new song or lick or whatever
what do you recommend?

when learning a new song....and the student fumbles or whatever...do you tell them to start over or should they continue with the song?

I am learning the beginning of a song and I make errors but then i go back to the start so I get a clean run....
someone at some point told me I should just keep moving on...

is there a right or a wrong way?

I always encourage my students to keep going. In the real world of performing live music you don't get a chance to start again - we all make mistakes and part of the learning process is to ride through those errors so I figure you might as well take this on board at a fairly early stage.
One of my exercises for beginners is to concentrate on the right (or strumming) hand while playing a chord sequence and just keep going regardless of any mistakes the left hand makes in forming the chords - I find this works well to get rid of the mental block you might get by thinking solely of the correct chord shapes and hence stop between each change.
I also get the student to look at their right hand rather than left while doing this excercise.
Hope this helps,
Nick Marchant

I'm not a teacher, but I kind of see a different view of the situation. If you are teaching a beginner, I would think it would be better to start over (maybe not the whole song, but a little before the part that they messed up on). As you are just starting to learn, it would be good to find out what you did wrong and correct it right then. Rather than just forget it and move on. If you keep going, you don't really learn what you messed up on, or why, or how to correct it. Worst case scenario, you always mess up on the same part and may even pick up some bad habits if you just move on. Beginners are learning the basics, so teaching them how to play the right way is obviously good.

The real life situation of not being able to start over is valid, but I would introduce that when they are more "intermediate" and not making minor errors anymore. They should already know the basics by now, so playing through their mistakes is less of a hindrance to their future performance.

It's true while performing you don't get to start over, but I think it's good to start at the beginning, and go until you mess up again when practicing. That's what I do when I'm learning something new, whether it's a new lick, or song lyrics. Practicing is totally different from performing, because you don't practice what you know, you play what you know. You practice what you're learning, and try to put it in the play category. It may seem like a waste of time to start at the beginning, but I think it just helps you learn better. It won't be long before you play it all the way through, and you'll know you played it right. I think that is much more rewarding than working on something for hours, and then going back and trying to play it all the way through. It makes more sense to keep going back to the start, until you get it right. We are talking about beginners here, and as you progress you will learn how to cover up mistakes, and keep on going.