Lee, I.(2003). How do Hong Kong Teachers correct errors in writing? Education Journal, 31 (1), 153-169.

Do not impose your idealized text on my writing.

In this article Lee aims at finding out ways in which ESL composition teachers correct students’ error. Lee aims at investigating how accurate are teachers’ error feedbacks, and whether the error strategy feedback teachers use to correct students’ error have any effect on the students’ original purpose for writing. He points out that if teachers are going to correct their students’ it is important for them to know and understand which strategy  will “reap maximum benefits for the students” ( Lee, p. 153). Researchers in the field of error correction argue whether certain error correction strategies are more beneficial to the students than others. For instance, direct versus the indirect strategy. However, the issue is not what strategy is more beneficial than the other, but how these strategies influence students’ original writing. For instance, teachers might decide to concentrate on students’ writing style instead of marking grammar errors. The question is which of the two strategies have a more detrimental effect on the students’ original purpose for writing?

Lee surveyed and interviewed Hong Kong based ESL composition teachers.  He then asked a selected number of teachers to mark a high school student’s essay (a letter of complaint), whose English proficiency is slightly above average. He did this in order to find out types of strategies teachers adopted when providing error correction feedback. These teachers were then asked to show how they approached the error correction task, the number of errors they have selected and the category of the error (Lee,p. 157). In his finding Lee was able to show that some of the teachers had the tendency of over marking student’s essay. Teachers also grouped errors based on their perception of the nature of the error. This is interesting because it seems the teachers were having difficulties in deciding which error to mark and which to live alone.  Form a personal experience, this type of dilemma is one that quite a number of ESL teachers have to deal with while marking students’ essay. One is constantly asking oneself when is it too much or too little error correction, and does it really matter? Another interesting finding was that only slightly over half of the teachers’ error feedbacks were accurate and other feedbacks where unnecessary. Lee states that the latter should raise concern, because these unnecessary feedbacks can be misleading and might cause students to deviate from their original purpose for writing.

Although I fully agree with Lee, I don’t think that the unnecessary feedback could be the only ones that might cause students to deviate from their original purpose for writing. I think all error feedback strategies have a potential to do so.  As ESL composition teachers I think we should evaluate our error feedback strategies and see whether they inhibit students’ development by forcing them to focus on what we want instead of their own purpose for writing. The question is how do we do so? Are there readily strategies that we as ESL composition can use, if not, how do we tackle this challenge? 

Lee, I. (2005). Error correction in the L2 Writing Classroom: What do Students think? TESL Canada Journal, 22 (2), 1-25

Why did you correct my error?

In article Lee moves away from the commonly research focus, which mainly focuses on teachers’ feedback strategies and their effects on students writing. Lee argues that there is less research which focuses on students’ beliefs and attitudes about teachers’ feedback on errors.  The topic on error correction is one of the utmost controversial topics in the field of L2 writing. The question of whether we should or should not provide feedback to students’ writing is one which still needs an answer, if any. Nevertheless, if a teacher decides to provide feedback to students’ writing, which can be the most exhausting and time-consuming aspect of teachers’ work. It would be of great benefit for the teacher to know the students beliefs and attitudes with regard to the teachers’ feedback on errors. Evidence from numerous researches in the field of L2 writing indicates that students are eager to receive teachers’ feedback on their writing and believe that they benefit from it. However, there seem to be a variance between students’ preferences with regards to the type of error and the methods that teachers use in providing the feedback. Students’ preferences and expectations are often affected by their language learning environment. It seems students learning English in a foreign environment (EFL) expects teachers to provide grammatical and lexical feedback, as oppose to students learning English as a second language (ESL), who expects teachers to provide rhetorical organization and idea generation.  

Lee administered a questionnaire, which was in both Chinese and English to a total number of 320 high school students from eight secondary schools through a contact teacher in each school. The author also did a follow-up interview in Cantonese with a selected number of students in order to find out whether certain questions might be difficult or unclear.  Lee in agreement with other researchers’ found that students wished their teachers to mark and correct errors for them. Students also believed that error correction was primarily the teacher’s responsibility. He found that there was no gap between teachers’ feedback methods and students’ preferences in error correction. Most of the students preferred comprehensive feedback as oppose to selective error feedback. The students believed that writing must be entirely error free. I think this believe is detrimental to students learning process, because if students focus on writing an error free piece of writing they might limit their creativity and sound artificial. I also think certain errors may never disappear. Another finding that was of interest to me is students did not believe they were making a great deal of progress despite teachers’ error feedback. I find this quite interesting; because I feel sometimes L2 writing teachers put so much effort in providing feedback to students because they feel it will help students gain accuracy.    

Overall, I found this article quite informative, because pedagogical I think it will be of great benefit if students appreciate and understand the types of feedback methods or techniques teachers use when providing writing feedback to students. This will help teachers save time and energy. However, I think most students will probable appreciate whatever feedback technique a teacher choose to use, because it might be the only one they are exposed to and think it is the best or only technique available. I also find it interesting that the learning environment plays a role in determining the type of feedback students prefer. I think this will help teachers to kind of have a starting point when trying to determine the type of feedback students might appreciate. However, teachers should be cautious, and not assume the same apply to all or most of the students.  

Ashwell, T. (2000). Patterns of Teacher responses to Student Writing in a Multiple-Draft Composition Classroom: Is Content Feedback followed by Form Feedback the best method? Journal of Second Language Writing, 9 (3), 227-257.

Which feedback pattern should I use?

In this article Ashwell looked at the two commonly recommended error correction patterns within a process writing approach. Content- feedback, recommended during the first several drafts and form-content feedback, recommended during the last draft. He then made a comparison between the two patterns and other patterns in which form and content feedback were mixed at both stages, and a control pattern of zero feedback. Scholars in the process writing approach to second language (L2) writing pedagogy made various suggestions about the best ways teachers can respond to their students’ writing.  One of these suggestions is that teachers should first attend to content feedback for the first few drafts before focusing on form feedback on later drafts. It is believed that by doing so, teachers can encourage revision on “large-scale changes” (content) on early drafts before helping the students with editing “small-scale changes” (form) on the final draft. ( Ashwell, p. 227). It is assumed that focusing on form too early in the writing process can discourage students from revising their text. It is also assumed that revision and editing need to be dealt with separately. However, it stills remain unclear whether the content-then-form pattern of teacher response is in fact more effective than other patterns.

Ashwell assigned 50 students enrolled in two writing classes into four treatment groups. The content-then-form group, form-then-content group, mixed group, and the control group. In his findings, he was able to show that the recommended pattern of content-then-form feedback is not superior to the form-then-content or mixed pattern. His findings supports other researchers such as Zamel (1985), who also acknowledge that giving content feedback on the first drafts and form feedback on later drafts does not produce better results than other patterns. His findings also supports Ferris (1997), who states that “giving from and content feedback simultaneously does not deleteriously affect students revision”(Ashwell, p. 243). Overall, Ashwell was able to show that providing any sort of feedback in any form of pattern helped students to improve the formal accuracy of their writing than if they received no feedback.

I find this article quite interesting because, I think is important for L2 writing teachers to understand or justify why they might be choosing to use a certain feedback pattern as oppose to the others. I think if students understand how the feedback is intended to affect their writing and why it is given that way, they might be in a better position to understand the feedback and act on it.  Even though  the author was not focusing on how form or content feedback might have an effect on the students’ original meaning in their writing, I think it would have been a good idea for him to do so. I think providing any form of feedback in any form of sequence to students should not be our central goal as L2 writing instructors. If we want to help our students express themselves freely and send their massages across as accurate as possible, we should try and find ways in which we can help our students understand that producing error free writing is not the most significant goal in learning how to write. 

Please fix my Errors

Ferris, D. (2006). Does error feedback help student writers? New evidence on the short- and long-term effects of written error correction. In K. Hyland & F. Hyland (Eds.), Feedback in second language writing: Contexts and issues (pp.81-104). New York: Cambridge University Press.

In this article Ferris investigates the effectiveness of error correction on students writing. She begins by pointing out that the efficacy of written error correction has been long debated in L2 writing.  Scholars, such as Truscott (1996) and Krashen (1984) argues that all error correction should be “eliminated because is it unnecessary, ineffective and even counterproductive” (Ferris, p. 81). On the contrary, the supporters, Ferris included, argue that empirical research does lend support to corrective feedback. She further points out that although there is a disagreement on error correction among the scholars they somehow feel there are ethical reasons for teachers to correct students’ errors.  L2 writers claim to need and value error feedback from their teachers and professionals in academia seems to appreciate accuracy in L2s’ writing. Ferris further argue that if both the “readers and writers of the L2 academic discourse” (Ferris, p.81) seems to appreciate corrective feedback, than the effectiveness of error correction in L2 students’ writing should be an open question.

By means of a longitudinal study Ferris collected data form an ESL composition class where students (N-92) wrote four three draft of essay over the semester. In her findings she was able to show that students were able to successfully edit errors marked by teachers. Overall, students show progress in written accuracy over the semester. However, the nature of an error as well as corrective method the teachers used yield different results depending on the length of time. The reduction in verb (form and tense) errors over the semester was high compare to certain types of errors, such as articles errors and sentence errors, which was slightly worse at the end of the semester. She accredits these differences to the type of corrective methods (direct or indirect) used by the teachers for the different kinds of error. L2 writing teachers used the indirect method for error correction for verb errors and the direct method for sentence structure errors. According to Ferris, teachers did not use the direct method for verb errors because they felt they were “treatable”, and students can consult handbooks to fix the errors. Whereas, for the sentence structure and article errors teachers used the direct because they felt they were “untreatable”, and there is no handbook that students can consult to fix the errors (p. 96)

I find the findings in this study particularly interesting because it will help ESL writing teachers to know the type of corrective method to use for different type of errors, depending on the proficiency level of the students. However, if an ESL  teachers wants to make use of a corrective method which will  have a long-term effect on students’ article and sentence errors, if needed, we need evidence from linguistics features which are not so treatable but prove to be treatable by correction feedback. This article was also of interest to me , because although some scholars in the L2 writing field do not agree as to whether error correction is worth doing, they also seems to be no hard evidence showing that the practice might harm students. If the students appreciate written error feedback from the teachers, than I think it is important for ESL writing teachers to know the type of error correction practice or methods to use to treat different types of errors.