Table Of Content

Treatment of Error in Second Language Student Writing Second Edition Dana R. Ferris University of California, Davis Series Editors: Diane Belcher and Jun Liu Ann Arbor The University of Michigan Press Series Editors Diane Belcher (Georgia State University) and Jun Liu (University of Arizona) Available titles in the series Treatment of Error in Second Language Student Writing, Second Edition Dana R. Ferris Peer Response in Second Language Writing Classrooms Jun Liu & Jette G. Hansen Critical Academic Writing and Multilingual Students A. Suresh Canagarajah Controversies in Second Language Writing: Dilemmas and Decisions in Research and Instruction Christine Pearson Casanave Connecting Reading & Writing in Second Language Writing Instruction Alan Hirvela Genre and Second Language Writing Ken Hyland Teacher Written Commentary in Second Language Writing Classrooms Lynn M. Goldstein Connecting Speaking & Writing in Second Language Writing Instruction Robert Weissberg Technologies in the Second Language Composition Classroom Joel Bloch Assessment in the Second Language Writing Classroom Deborah Crusan Journal Writing in Second Language Education Christine Pearson Casanave Intercultural Rhetoric in the Writing Classroom Ulla Connor The presentations of tables, figures, and/or images are dependent on the device and display options. Some image content or language characters may have been removed or may be altered depending on the device used to read this eBook. Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2011 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America ∞ Printed on acid-free paper ISBN-13: 978-0-472-03476-5 2014 2013 2012 2011 4 3 2 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ferris, Dana. Treatment of error in second language student writing / Dana R. Ferris. — 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-472-03476-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. English language—Study and teaching—Foreign speakers. 2. English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching. 3. Report writing—Study and teaching. 4. English language—Errors of usage. 5. Second language acquisition. I. Title. PE1128.A2F474 2011 808'.0428071--dc23 2011023791 ISBN-13: 978-0-472-02973-0 (electronic) To the scholars and teachers out there who are trying hard to do the right thing on a sticky issue. You inspire me. Series Foreword Approximately a decade and a dozen books ago, our series was launched with the publication of Dana Ferris’s Treatment of Error in Second Language Student Writing. It is difficult to imagine a more auspicious start for a series. As soon as it appeared in print, Treatment of Error found an eager and extensive audience and, since then, has continued to appeal to a wide readership. Those who have read the first edition, perhaps repeatedly as have many of us who view it as a trusted guide to addressing multilingual writers’ language use issues and to teaching others how to do so, should be more than pleased to see Ferris’s updated and expanded second edition, enhanced by insights from recent developments in areas such as second language acquisition and corpus linguistics. Read- ers for whom the second edition is their first experience with this book—whether novice or seasoned teachers, specializing in the teaching and learning of language, or just interested in helping language learners produce more reader-friendly texts—will likely find in this highly accessible, practitioner- oriented resource the type of guidance that they are seeking and are unlikely to find elsewhere. No specific prior training is needed to benefit from the research- and theory-informed journey Ferris takes us on through the challenging terrain of responding to error. Far from downplaying the challenge, Ferris heightens our appreciation of the complexity of the undertaking—helping learners’ take control of the syntactic, morphological, and lexical dimensions of their texts—while at the same providing us with a highly persuasive rationale for accepting this responsibility and an impressive toolkit of approaches for facilitating our students’ progress. The goal of this book is not, as a facile interpreta- vii viii Series Foreword tion of the title Treatment of Error might lead one to believe, simply to make us more efficient and effective correctors of our students’ grammar. The goal is instead to enable us to bet- ter scaffold our students’ growing independence as language analysts and self-editors, and ultimately as producers of second language texts that speak for them and to readers in the ways that they, as authors, want them to. Ferris’s expertise in this area—responding to the linguistic needs of multilingual writers—and her understanding of the needs of those who teach them make the goal of second language learner (and writer) autonomy seem eminently achievable. Diane Belcher Georgia State University Jun Liu University of Arizona Preface My own interest in the treatment of error in second language (L2) student writing began, literally, in various women’s restrooms on several university campuses in the latter half of the 1980s. This was where I and other ESL teachers would talk about a dilemma that we all struggled with. We had been trained to be “process approach” writing teachers (following seminal works such as Zamel, 1982, and Krashen, 1984)— encouraging multiple-drafting, revision, collaboration, and an emphasis on ideas, with attention to language issues (grammar, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and other mechanics) being intentionally postponed to the very end of the composing process. What this often meant, in practice, was that grammar and editing issues were almost never addressed by teachers or their students in the ESL writing classroom. And yet, we found, the students’ language problems were not magically disappearing as the sure result of a more enlightened process and view of writing. Worse, L2 writers themselves, painfully aware of their own linguistic deficits and the need for teacher intervention, were disappointed with instructional policies such as, “I will not correct your journal entries, your freewrites, or your early essay drafts. You should be focusing on express- ing your ideas and building fluency and not worrying about grammar until ‘later.’” This simultaneous awareness of persistent written error and of student frustration led to these whispered restroom discussions: “I’m teaching grammar in my writing class.” “I am, too. I have to. They need it!” To those of us trained in process philosophies and tech- niques, error correction, grammar instruction, and editing