Introduction 2

1.1.CORRECTING STUDENTS’ WRITING ERRORS: THE ROLE OF COMMUNICATIVE FEEDBACK

Based on a review of the literature on the effective practices in error correction in writing assignments, the following guidelines can be followed:

• Focus on communication: Woods (1989) gave some alternatives to error correction as a means of improving students' language forms.These included f ocusing on real communicative situations as a context for correction, teaching students strategies f or paying attention to form, and making them responsible for monitoring their own form.
• Give content-related feedback: Combining written error-corrections with explicit rule reminders does not help L2 student writers to avoid surface-level errors or facilitate higher-level writing production. Content-related feedback resulted in journal entries of superior quality. Verbal-ability distinctions were found to play a significant role in achievement, especially on learning tasks with higher-order cognitive processes (Kepner, 1991).⁷
• Focus on comprehensible input: Wen (1999) recommended that writing instruction should focus on comprehensible input, form-focused activities, varied corrective feedback at the sentence and discourse levels, and the timing of corrections.
• Give immediate practice and feedback: Herron & Tomasello (1988) found that learning was better in the feedback condition, especially for the new structure. In the feedback condition, students answered questions requiring the use of the structure after only a brief introduction to it. Their mistakes were systematically corrected by the teacher using a sequential series of prompts. The teacher never provided the correct sentence for the students.
• Highlight error location: Allen (2001) examined the editing performance of 20 American and 20 Korean students as they detected and corrected errors in supplied standard essays. The analysis included misdetection, miscorrections, and stylistic changes. Allen (2001) found that highlighting the error location provided an effective scaffolding strategy especially for basic writers, and effectively minimized the differences between basic and advanced writers in error detection and error correction.
• Do not supply correct forms: Lyster & Ranta (1997) observed that four fourth-grade French immersion students in Montreal, Canada responded more successfully when the teacher did not supply but negotiated the form with them, i.e., responded to clarification requests, provided meta-linguistics feedback, elicitation, and/or error repetition.
• Use an error taxonomy: Li & Chan (1999) suggested that teachers use corrective feedback that consists of a set of pedagogically sound procedures to help student selfmonitor their own written English output.
• Error correction by students: A study by Lee (1997) showed that undergraduate engineering students at Hong Kong Polytechnic University failed to detect errors, had limited understanding of grammatical terms in a correction code, and were able to correct surface errors better than meaning errors. Lee (1997) found that use of error feedback was more effective than overt correction. To modify students’ behaviors, the teacher must handle the error correction code with care and should vary the attention he/she pays to errors.
• Follow an algorithmic approach to error correction by: (i) Using pedagogically sound input requiring minimal cognitive effort; (ii) showing the procedures with illustrative examples; (iii) giving explicit rules that help the students conceptualize the correction procedure; and (iv) adding reinforcement exercises. Comments f rom both teachers and classmates indicated that the algorithmic approach was effective, flexible, and versatile in helping Hong Kong Chinese ESL students overcome persistent writing errors (Chan, Kwan & Li, 2002).⁸
• Follow a selective-discovery approach: Before correcting written errors, teachers should consider the following: (i) the student's purpose and goals for communicating in writing; (ii) the student's current written proficiency level in L2; (iii) the teacher's awareness of the types and frequencies of written errors students produce and how the types and frequencies of errors relate to the students' writing goals; and (iv) the students' attitudes towards making errors and towards error correction itself (Hendrickson, 1980).
• Teachers’ attitude towards error correction: Instructors should not be hostile or indifferent to errors, should distinguish between errors and mistakes, and should depend on their own teaching experience. They should also use communicative activities and tasks that are helpful in error remediation (Lee, 1989).
• Discuss errors in draft: In French immersion classrooms, Froc (1995) found that writing conference in which students spoke freely, wrote a draft of what they spoke about, and then discussed the errors in the draft and why they committed the errors were effective.
• Maintain students’ confidence: A balance must be drawn between handling significant errors and maintaining students’ confidence so that they feel encouraged to continue writing. To do this, the teacher can include conferences, mini-lessons, and use checklists of common errors (Taniguchi, 1990).⁹