Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Grammar
correction in the writing classroom
Sang-Keun Shin
Introduction
This is just completely different worlds, this engineering and English. The
claim that language courses tailored to students needs will increase their
motivation and facilitate their learning is hardly a new claim. This response
from a second language (L2) student writer in Leki and Carson (1997),
however, powerfully reminds us how difficult it is to decipher precisely what
student needs are and how to best go about meeting those needs.
Student writers academic needs have been explored through two main
avenues of research. One line of research has investigated the range and
nature of writing tasks assigned by university instructors in a wide variety of
subject areas (for example, Zhu 2004). Other studies have explored
discipline-specific discourse through genre analysis (for example,
Kanoksilapatham 2005). Numerous studies and projects have been devoted
to helping students write in English in their discipline like economists,
engineers, etc. Yet we know very little about how they actually write and what
their precise writing needs really are. This is perhaps a result of the gap in
the reporting of research focused on students work but not including the
students voices (Leki 2001: 18).
Recent debate on the usefulness of grammar correction does not appear to
be an exception. Since Truscott (1996) claimed that grammar correction is
ineffective and can even be harmful, grammar correction in writing classes
has become a topic of heightened interest to L2 writing teachers. Truscotts
rather radical stance against the value of error correction has led to a heated
discussion (for example, Ferris 1999), and the debate is far from settled.
Interestingly, however, students voices with respect to grammar correction
have seldom been heard. To understand the value of grammar correction,
we need to listen to our students and consider their needs in deciding if,
when, and how to provide error feedback and correction to student writers
(Ferris op. cit.).
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Advance Access publication December 6, 2007
The study
Drawing on these data, this paper first examines the validity of four teaching
principles often advocated in L2 composition literature, focusing on their
implications for error correction. It then goes on to address the centrally
important question concerning grammar correction: why should we correct
students grammar errors?
Four principles in L2
writing pedagogy
This section addresses the validity of four principles writing teachers often
take for granted in L2 writing classrooms. Each principle is first presented,
and then the student voices are reported. Finally, critical reviews of the
principle will follow. The quotes presented below are part of student
responses at the interviews.
Principle 1: Editing should be a clean-up activity
In a process-oriented L2 composition classroom, editing is considered to be
one of the last tasks that L2 writers need to perform in order to finish a paper.
Students are encouraged to focus on content at earlier stages of composing
and postpone their concerns for correct language use until later drafts
(Zamel 1983). However, the following stories suggest quite convincingly
that editing takes place as an integral part of the writing process at all stages
of composition.
I often get stuck because I cannot think of appropriate expressions, so
often I have to spend a few minutes completing a single sentence.
I sometimes spend a great deal of time looking for appropriate
expressions by leafing through articles and books related to the topic
I am working on.
I always waste a lot of time dealing with stupid, minor grammar issues
such as vocabularies and even prepositions.
When I was working on literature review section, I was not sure whether I
should use the present or the past tense when I was referring to previous
studies. I got confused because some writers used the present tense and
others used the past. I decided to use the present tense in the paper.
I am still having a hard time finding a correct subject for a sentence. I have
questions like should it be an active sentence or a passive sentence? or
should I take it as a subject or an object? When I write in Korean, I dont
Grammar correction
359
The goal of this study was to critically review the current debate over the
efficacy of grammar correction in L2 writing classrooms through the eyes of
L2 writers. Five (three female, two male) ES L students of advanced English
proficiency volunteered to participate in this study. They were Korean
learners of English and were graduate students at a major research
university in the western part of the United States of America. Employing
stimulus recall methodology, they reported the composing processes they
had gone through while producing academic papers for their content
courses. They were also interviewed to obtain their perspectives on
grammar correction. They were asked specifically about the type(s) of error
feedback they prefer to receive. The interviews were semi-structured and
conducted in a consistent order. Thus, even though the interview questions
were designed beforehand, they were flexible in the sense that each
generated further questions contingent on the students responses.
need to worry about these questions at all because it comes out naturally,
but in English, I have to think about these issues in many cases.
It is true that editing deals with local level issues of writing. However, this
does not mean that the influence of these local level issues is at all local in
L2 writing. Since language problems constrain the entire composing
process, editing is a critical and necessary facet of the text creating process,
not just a clean-up activity. This is not to say that editing skills should be the
central focus of L2 writing courses. L2 writers need to learn that good
writing is not necessarily correct writing. The point is, however, that we
should not simply assume that L2 student writers will be able to magically
come up with appropriate vocabularies and expressions simply on the
basis of being allowed enough time. If too much time and attention is
devoted to revising stages of writing at the expense of dealing with language
issues, L2 writers may be ill-served by process-oriented pedagogy.
Principle 2: Composing is a process of discovering meaning
This is a principle taken for granted by many, if not most, writing instructors
who often tell their students: Composing is the making of meaning out of
chaos and Explore your topic through writing. Writing instructors often
assure their students that they do not need to know what they are going to
write beforehand (Zamel 1982). It should be noted, however, the evidence
that we have in support of this view has come primarily from L2 composing
studies, most of which were conducted under heavily controlled conditions
(Polio 2003). What follows, on the other hand, more accurately reflects the
reality of what our students actually do when they write in drafted writing
situations.
Its so hard to write in English. Even though I know exactly what I want to
say, when it is translated into English, it is no longer what I wanted to say.
Everything becomes so simple.
I usually start to read more than required to choose a doable topic and to
find useful linguistic expressions I can use in my paper. Then I usually
type important paragraphs verbatim on the computer and arrange them
into the proper sequence. Later, I paraphrase those paragraphs into my
own words. Even though these processes are often very unproductive,
I employ this strategy mainly because of my language problems.
Otherwise I will not be able to translate all of my ideas to English.
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Sang-Keun Shin
According to these writers, they edited their texts while creating meaning
because they did not have enough language to express their ideas. Since
language problems plagued them throughout the composing process,
editing was not a clean-up activity for these writers. In first language (L1)
writing, the translating process (i.e. turning pre-linguistic ideas into
language) is, if not automatic, at least not problematic. L1 writers can just
ignore minor language problems and focus on creating meaning. They can
also make changes on the basis of how their writing sounds. In L2 writing,
however, the translating process can generally results in major problems
because L2 writers access to necessary words and structures is by their very
nature much more limited. They struggle with surface level features of
writing throughout the entire composition process as a result of their lack of
linguistic resources as compared to L1 writers.
361
After I had decided upon the topic, I undertook an extensive search of the
available sources and read all of them before starting to write the paper. I
also talked to my advisor and a statistics consultant regarding research
methodology. I continued to make my research design more
sophisticated and to clarify research questions. One week before the due
date, I made an outline consisting of section titles and articles that I had
decided to cite in the proposal. My first draft was simply an expansion
of the outline I had made because I just wrote down the main points in
each section.
Sang-Keun Shin
grammar and usage until the final stages of the writing process. However, it
is not entirely clear how well these guidelines do indeed serve the writing
needs of L2 writers.
I prefer more directive comments on language forms and more
facilitative comments on writing style.
363
For me, it is very hard to know all the correct expressions in English, so
I assume certain expressions and if they are not corrected, I believe
I am right, so those expressions become fixed in my brain. But, when
I heard the correct expression from a native speaker somehow, somehow,
I easily recognize that I have been wrong and I can fix my problem and
I dont forget that expression because I have had the fixed expression
in me even though that was wrong.
supposed to correct their errors if they do not know where their errors are or
even how to correct them? I am not suggesting that we should always
provide directive comments on L2 writers language problems. Rather, I am
simply suggesting that there are many L2 writers who desire to know what
they are doing incorrectly and how they might learn how to correct their own
mistakes, and these students would like very much to have teachers who
offer them grammar correction tools, not well-meaning bystanders
(Hyland 2003: 19).
Conclusion
Sang-Keun Shin
The stories presented and analysed earlier clearly demonstrate that some of
the most widely-held beliefs concerning L2 composition pedagogy do not
necessarily reflect the realities of how L2 writers actually write and what they
actually need. We have learnt, for instance, that the following two claims
concerning grammar correction are not true for all L2 writers: Students
favor their intuitions over the thing they are told by writing teachers and
ESL students were not particularly serious in the way they dealt with
corrections and more often than not were reluctant to do any rewriting,
many seeing it as a form of punishment (Truscott op. cit.). This is clearly not
the case with the five writers who were hungry for higher levels of support
and assistance from their instructors with respect to grammar.
Grammar correction
365
References
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