Choice Words Ch. 1

So I started rereading Choice Words by Peter H. Johnston. The teachers from my school did a book study on this book a couple years ago, but I lacked the gumption to get up early and participate fully. However, this book has been sitting on my shelf and a colleague recently read Johnston's other book about language, Opening Minds. This inspired me to revisit Choice Words. I am barely into the book, however, and I'm thinking about the student-teacher exchange on page 4. The teacher starts by saying, "You said, 'I will to my friend, the car driver.' Does this word look like will?" Then the student responds, the teacher says something back, and they have a thoughtful conversation. In my experience, I will begin to say, "You said, 'I wi-...'" and my student cuts me off saying, "OH! WAVE! I MEANT WAVE!" Or sometimes, they will self-correct with another incorrect word, and keep guessing and I'm not able to have this conversation at all. It's like these kiddos have been questioned to the point that now they think they've done something wrong and are blurting out guesses just hoping to be right. I want my students to be able to listen to my questions and not automatically assume that I'm pointing out a mistake. I guess in the first example I gave above, with them self-correcting with the correct word, I could expand the conversation by asking, "How did you figure that out?" or "How do you know it's 'wave'?" In other instances when the student just blurts out guesses (usually my strugglers), I remind the student to slow down and thing about what I'm asking and what would make sense in the sentence/paragraph/story. 

Does anyone else struggle with this?