Page 62 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

48 CHAPTER 3
correction is to help L2 writers become independent editors of their own text. To achieve this objective, both teachers and students need to be aware that all errors are not created equal. Many studies have addressed the gravity of errors in the perceptions of university faculty (Vann, Lorenz, & Meyer, 1991; Vann, Meyer, & Lorenz, 1984). For example, as mentioned earlier, among other researchers, Santos (1988) found that lexical and se- mantic errors are often considered to be particularly grievous in L2 aca- demic text. Other reports note that grammar errors also vary in their importance to the L2 text quality.
According to studies cited in this section, the most egregious gram- mar errors include:
• • • • • •
word order
verb tense
word morphology (word form)
it-deletion in cleft constructions relative (adjective) clauses subject-verb agreement.
Errors that have less impact on evaluations of student text include:
• articles
• prepositions
• comma splices • spelling
Above all, however, studies of error gravity and other investigationshave established clearly that faculty in the disciplines are far less tolerant of NNS than NS errors and view L2 language-related errors as sufficiently impor- tant to negatively affect their overall evaluations (Byrd & Reid, 1998; Ferris &Hedgcock, 1998).
Thus, teaching students to become independent self-editorsrepresents a crucial component of writing instruction. Some approaches to teaching L2 writing advocate text-level editing only as the final stage of writing—after matters of discourse organization and content are addressed. However, be- cause the ultimate objective of editing instruction is to teach students essen- tial self-editing skills that can be useful for the duration of their academic careers, working on lexical and grammar errors can take place at any point of essay development (Ashwell, 2000).
Self-editing instruction can proceed in stages and be selective. The first step is to raise students' awareness of ubiquitous and egregious errors and improve noticing skills. Editing exercises can begin with text/papers that are not students' own and that contain limited and controlled types of errors.
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