Improving Accuracy in Student Writing: Error Treatment in the Class Composition

My Writing Process

I focus on the linguistic accuracy of my work as I am typing or writing. I know that none of my work is without error, but I try to catch as many issues as possible. I developed this strategy after years and years of formal education and correction at home to acquire the grammatical knowledge that I use to edit my work. In addition to being taught by authority figures, as my knowledge of sentence structure developed, I began to notice the sentence structure I books I read. If I liked how the author’s style I would try to mimic it in school during my next writing assignment. Whatever errors I made in developing a new writing style would be corrected by my teacher.

Effective Editing Approach

Overall, I believe that my approach to editing is effective to a certain degree. I usually make very few grammatical or punctuation errors since I edit as I go. However, it isn’t time efficient. What takes other people two or three minutes to go back and make revisions, takes me much, much longer. This provides me with the foresight to see if I should scrap an idea or add or delete a few words or sentences, but sometimes the concept suffers because I make too many corrections. I’ve recently tried writing down main points. While my typing time is faster because my ideas are written down, I may make more errors in other areas.

Student Feedback Error

Being grammatically correct was drilled at home and by certain teachers at school, it would be the most challenging to give students feedback on grammar. It would be difficult to step outside of my biases about grammar. I would be questioning if I’m giving too much attention to a small grammatical error.

Grammar is also a wide and varied subject. There are so many rules in addition to possibilities, that often native English speakers are confused. If not taught consistently and constantly reinforced at a young age, grammar is daunting to learn. I feel that for ELLs it is a difficult concept to grasp because the only answer that you can provide for why their sentence is incorrect is simply: those are the rules.

Ideas for L2 Student Editing

I would encourage L2 students to type their written work into Google Docs or Microsoft Word to help with editing written work. I would also show them how to turn on the grammar function so they will have to click on and have the program explain why their sentence needs correcting. I’m sure that there are other programs that students can use in the self-editing process, however, my knowledge is limited. In addition to using writing programs, I would encourage students to have a page of notes providing examples of sentences, articles, and other things that they can use in the self-editing process. I currently use the aforementioned programs and I have used a similar page of notes in the past, but my current process of editing only contains one of those elements and I would not suggest that as the only method of editing to L2 students. I also wouldn’t suggest them editing every single error as they write or type. It’s too time consuming and I would rather them focus on their ideas and structuring a sentence to the best of their ability.