Page 64 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

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CHAPTER 3
same types, with explicit instructions that the student needs to correct the underlined structures.
4. In the second (final) draft of the second assignment, the teacher should correct only the most complex occurrences of these types of er- rors, and the responsibility for the rest needs to be shifted from the teacher to the student.
5. It is vital, however, that the first group of error types not be abandoned when editing practice on the second group of errors be- gins. Rather, students' awareness of and learning to correct errors of various types has to be cumulative.
6. When practice exercises on the second group of errors begin, the teacher should not correct the errors from the first group (except in rare cases of complex constructions),but underline or highlight them in student writingas they occur. Teacher corrections should be limited to the second group of error types (see Step 1).
7. When working on the third (or subsequent) assignment, the first group of errors should become fully a student's responsibility, and the types of errors in editing exercises can be expanded to the next group of four to six types.
8. Again in the first piece of writing that takes place during the work on the second group of errors, the teacher should correct all oc- currences and highlight them in subsequent student writing (see Step 2), and then the cycle is repeated.
Throughout thecourse,itisveryimportantthattheteacherbeconsistent in correcting, underlining/highlighting, and shifting the responsibilityfor editing errors to students (R. Ellis, 1984). By the end of the course, it is rea- sonable to expect students to notice and correct 20 to 40 common typesof errors in their own writing.
Some examples of the grouped error types, beginning with the most ac- cessible.
The First Group of Error Types
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Uncountable nouns (e.g., equipment, information, knowledge) Irregular plural forms of nouns (focus on academic vocabulary— see also chap. 5 on nouns; e.g., criterion-criteria, phenomenon-phe-
nomena, medium-media, analysis-analyses, basis-bases, hypothe- sis-hypotheses)
Quantifiers (e.g.,few/a few, little/a little), subject noun phrases with quantifiers and verb agreement (e.g., some/many books + plural verb or some/much information + singular verb)
Subject noun + prepositional phrase and verb agreement (e.g., The researcher with two assistants investigates ... vs. The researcher and two assistants investigate0) ...
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