‘Fire your proofreader!’ Grammarcorrection in the writing classroom

Sang-Keun Shin

This article critically reviews the usefulness of grammar correction in secondlanguage writing instruction through the eyes of five second-language writers. Itfirst examines the validity of four teaching principles that appear to influence howwriting instructors approach error correction in classrooms and concludes withdiscussions as towhy grammar correction is necessary for second-languagewriters.

Introduction ‘This is just completely different worlds, this engineering and English.’ Theclaim that language courses tailored to students’ needs will increase theirmotivation and facilitate their learning is hardly a new claim. This responsefrom a second language (L2) student writer in Leki and Carson (1997),however, powerfully reminds us how difficult it is to decipher precisely whatstudent needs are and how to best go about meeting those needs.

Student writers’ academic needs have been explored through two mainavenues of research. One line of research has investigated the range andnature of writing tasks assigned by university instructors in a wide variety ofsubject areas (for example, Zhu 2004). Other studies have exploreddiscipline-specific discourse through genre analysis (for example,Kanoksilapatham 2005). Numerous studies and projects have been devotedto helping students write in English in their discipline like economists,engineers, etc. Yet we know very little about how they actually write and whattheir precise writing needs really are. This is perhaps a result of ‘the gap inthe reporting of research focused on students’ work but not including thestudents’ voices’ (Leki 2001: 18).

Recent debate on the usefulness of grammar correction does not appear tobe an exception. Since Truscott (1996) claimed that grammar correction isineffective and can even be harmful, grammar correction in writing classeshas become a topic of heightened interest to L2 writing teachers. Truscott’srather radical stance against the value of error correction has led to a heateddiscussion (for example, Ferris 1999), and the debate is far from settled.Interestingly, however, students’ voices with respect to grammar correctionhave seldom been heard. To understand the value of grammar correction,we need to listen to our students and consider their needs in deciding if,when, and how to provide error feedback and correction to student writers(Ferris op. cit.).

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The study The goal of this study was to critically review the current debate over theefficacy of grammar correction in L2 writing classrooms through the eyes ofL2 writers. Five (three female, two male) ESL students of advanced Englishproficiency volunteered to participate in this study. They were Koreanlearners of English and were graduate students at a major researchuniversity in the western part of the United States of America. Employingstimulus recall methodology, they reported the composing processes theyhad gone through while producing academic papers for their contentcourses. They were also interviewed to obtain their perspectives ongrammar correction. They were asked specifically about the type(s) of errorfeedback they prefer to receive. The interviews were semi-structured andconducted in a consistent order. Thus, even though the interview questionswere designed beforehand, they were flexible in the sense that eachgenerated further questions contingent on the students’ responses.

Drawing on these data, this paper first examines the validity of four teachingprinciples often advocated in L2 composition literature, focusing on theirimplications for error correction. It then goes on to address the centrallyimportant question concerning grammar correction: why should we correctstudents’ grammar errors?

Four principles in L2writing pedagogy

This section addresses the validity of four principles writing teachers oftentake for granted in L2 writing classrooms. Each principle is first presented,and then the student voices are reported. Finally, critical reviews of theprinciple will follow. The quotes presented below are part of studentresponses at the interviews.

Principle 1: Editing should be a clean-up activityIn a process-oriented L2 composition classroom, editing is considered to beone of the last tasks that L2 writers need to perform in order to finish a paper.Students are encouraged to focus on content at earlier stages of composingand postpone their concerns for correct language use until later drafts(Zamel 1983). However, the following stories suggest quite convincinglythat editing takes place as an integral part of the writing process at all stagesof composition.

I often get stuck because I cannot think of appropriate expressions, sooften I have to spend a few minutes completing a single sentence.

I sometimes spend a great deal of time looking for appropriateexpressions by leafing through articles and books related to the topicI am working on.

I always waste a lot of time dealing with stupid, minor grammar issuessuch as vocabularies and even prepositions.

When I was working on literature review section, I was not sure whether Ishould use the present or the past tense when I was referring to previousstudies. I got confused because some writers used the present tense andothers used the past. I decided to use the present tense in the paper.

I am still having a hard time finding a correct subject for a sentence. I havequestions like ‘should it be an active sentence or a passive sentence?’ or‘should I take it as a subject or an object?’ When I write in Korean, I don’t

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need to worry about these questions at all because it comes out naturally,but in English, I have to think about these issues in many cases.

According to these writers, they edited their texts while creating meaningbecause they did not have enough language to express their ideas. Sincelanguage problems plagued them throughout the composing process,editing was not a clean-up activity for these writers. In first language (L1)writing, the translating process (i.e. turning pre-linguistic ideas intolanguage) is, if not automatic, at least not problematic. L1 writers can justignore minor language problems and focus on creating meaning. They canalso make changes on the basis of how their writing sounds. In L2 writing,however, the translating process can generally results in major problemsbecause L2 writers’ access to necessary words and structures is by their verynature much more limited. They struggle with surface level features ofwriting throughout the entire composition process as a result of their lack oflinguistic resources as compared to L1 writers.

It is true that editing deals with local level issues of writing. However, thisdoes not mean that the influence of these local level issues is at all local inL2 writing. Since language problems constrain the entire composingprocess, editing is a critical and necessary facet of the text creating process,not just a clean-up activity. This is not to say that editing skills should be thecentral focus of L2 writing courses. L2 writers need to learn that goodwriting is not necessarily correct writing. The point is, however, that weshould not simply assume that L2 student writers will be able to magicallycome up with appropriate vocabularies and expressions simply on thebasis of being allowed enough time. If too much time and attention isdevoted to revising stages of writing at the expense of dealing with languageissues, L2 writers may be ill-served by process-oriented pedagogy.

Principle 2: Composing is a process of discovering meaningThis is a principle taken for granted by many, if not most, writing instructorswho often tell their students: ‘Composing is the making of meaning out ofchaos’ and ‘Explore your topic through writing’. Writing instructors oftenassure their students that they do not need to know what they are going towrite beforehand (Zamel 1982). It should be noted, however, the evidencethat we have in support of this view has come primarily from L2 composingstudies, most of which were conducted under heavily controlled conditions(Polio 2003). What follows, on the other hand, more accurately reflects thereality of what our students actually do when they write in drafted writingsituations.

It’s so hard to write in English. Even though I know exactly what I want tosay, when it is translated into English, it is no longer what I wanted to say.Everything becomes so simple.

I usually start to read more than required to choose a doable topic and tofind useful linguistic expressions I can use in my paper. Then I usuallytype important paragraphs verbatim on the computer and arrange theminto the proper sequence. Later, I paraphrase those paragraphs into myown words. Even though these processes are often very unproductive,I employ this strategy mainly because of my language problems.Otherwise I will not be able to translate all of my ideas to English.

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I often have to discard very important paragraphs because I failed totranslate the ideas into appropriate English.

I start with reading books and taking notes while reading. I usually putdown key words or sentences which I find interesting or problematic andrevise the notes twice. I usually summarize my ideas into one or twoparagraphs. I then make a detailed outline and proceed to refine the ideaslittle by little before I begin writing the first draft.

I usually start writing my papers after completing all the data analysis.I usually spend a great deal of time generating and refining my ideasbefore starting to produce texts. I cannot produce error-free essays, soI try to compensate with the content of the paper.

After I had decided upon the topic, I undertook an extensive search of theavailable sources and read all of them before starting to write the paper. Ialso talked to my advisor and a statistics consultant regarding researchmethodology. I continued to make my research design moresophisticated and to clarify research questions. One week before the duedate, I made an outline consisting of section titles and articles that I haddecided to cite in the proposal. My first draft was simply an expansionof the outline I had made because I just wrote down the main points ineach section.

How do L2 writers compose in real-life composing situations? As the abovedata show, the participants started to write with preconceived and well-formed ideas and spent the majority of their composing time translatingtheir ideas rather than creating meanings. Even though they knew more orless what they wanted to say, they often got stuck because they did not haveenough control of English to write fluidly. This is not to say that L2 writing isnot a process of creating meaning or that it is not recursive. The point is thatlabelling the composition process a ‘discovery of meaning’ can be quitemisleading, because it does not accurately reflect the real challenges that L2writers encounter—challenges that have much more to do with languageissues than global issues of composition. For these writers, then, theemphasis on rewriting may be prove less than fruitful because figuring outwhat to write about is not so much a problem as how to say it in clearEnglish.

Principle 3: L2 writers’ composing difficulties are largely the result ofdifficulties with composing than linguistic skillsMost process-oriented L2 composition guides suggest that difficulties incomposing in L2 result more from a lack of composing competence thanfrom a lack of linguistic competence (Zamel 1982). This view of writing hasled to a decreased emphasis of the importance of the role of grammar in L2composition classrooms. Again, we should teach L2 writers to put moreemphasis on creating content rather than on correcting forms. However, thefollowing stories serve as a powerful reminder of the simple fact that L2writers are still L2 learners who face a constant struggle with form, which inturn limits the content of their paper.

I just received three reviews of my paper that I submitted for publication.All three reviewers liked both content and organization. But all of them

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commented that the paper needed to be more carefully edited forlanguage because there were various awkward sentences. I did multipledrafting and I even asked two native speakers to proofread it. I was reallyfrustrated because language problems are really beyond my control.

I became angry at the feedback from the professor, who was also a non-native speaker of English. She commented that she had trouble readingmy paper because of my poor English.

I know that I should not copy sentences from reading materials verbatimbut I do not know how not to. They are exactly what I want to say and I donot know how to paraphrase them.

I got the following comments from my advisor: ‘Your substance isgenerally fine. I’ve made some suggestions for this. However, there are somany problems with your writing usage that I could not finish readingthe paper. Please clean up the paper and I will read it again.’ He drewa line on page 11 and stopped reading from there.

I got an A- in another course because of language problems even thoughthe instructor found the contents of my paper excellent.

Assuming that the drafting process itself will take care of many languageproblems, some L2 writing teachers tend to believe that good writing is theresult of rewriting (Frodesen and Holten 2003). Clearly, however, theprocess of translating does not just happen for L2 writers, at least, until theyreach a very high level of proficiency. The five writers who participated inthis study did rewrite their papers because they wrote for a real audience.They also produced multiple drafts. However, they complained that theiressays were still full of errors because drafting processes did not take care ofmany of the language problems that they encountered. Simply put, it wasnot creating meaning itself but the translating process that they found mosthard to deal with.

If grammar is dealt with at all in today’s process-oriented writingclassrooms, it is typically limited to attempts by instructors to correct theerrors that students make. What is all too often ignored in the process-oriented writing classrooms is the value of the proactive focus on form(Frodesen and Holten ibid.). By addressing the grammar points that theinstructor believes will be especially useful for the students in question, theproactive approach helps to expand L2 writers’ grammar knowledge tohigher levels, thereby helping them to more fully reach their potential asa writer.

Principle 4: Teachers’ comments should not be directiveRecent L2 composition research advocates providing indirect rather thandirect error feedback, so that their students are encouraged to furtherdevelop their ideas. Directive response to language errors is largelydiscouraged (Bates, Lane, and Lane 1993) because excessive attention toword- or sentence-level concerns may tend to short-circuit the writer’sattention from substantive revision to micro level correction. These aresome of the beliefs they hold true: ‘Teacher response may appropriatestudent texts by being too directive or prescriptive’ and ‘Respond only tostudents’ ideas and organization on early drafts and saving feedback on

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grammar and usage until the final stages of the writing process’. However, itis not entirely clear how well these guidelines do indeed serve the writingneeds of L2 writers.

I prefer more directive comments on language forms and morefacilitative comments on writing style.

For me, it is very hard to know all the correct expressions in English, soI assume certain expressions and if they are not corrected, I believeI am right, so those expressions become fixed in my brain. But, whenI heard the correct expression from a native speaker somehow, somehow,I easily recognize that I have been wrong and I can fix my problem andI don’t forget that expression because I have had the fixed expressionin me even though that was wrong.

Somehow, I developed a bad habit of distrusting people when they,especially ESL instructors, say that my writing is good because I knowI always make errors in grammar somewhere unwittingly. My distrustwas proved valid when my professor said to me, ‘Fire your proofreader’as she read my research proposal and pointed out some errors, whichwere generously passed on by my colleagues.

When I am struggling with a certain thought or a sentence, I want toknow how I can correct it or paraphrase it better. I am usually not satisfiedwhen my teacher just comments on the last page, ‘good job’ or ‘goodpoints’. Of course, such comments make me feel confident but I expect tosee corrections on my grammar and more specific instructions onimproving it, unless my paper is perfect, you know, which I don’t thinkwas ever the case.

I prefer directive comments because I want to know what I need to do formy next draft and how I can satisfy the teacher. Some teachers would evenreword my phrases and rearrange them without really asking me whatmy original idea was. Even during conference, I would merely consent tothe instructor’s suggestion without fighting over questions of validity ofsome of my expressions or ideas. I even cried in the middle of oneconference because I felt so bad about my inability to express myself.

When it comes to the content of the paper, the preference for non-directivecomments found in L1 writing pedagogy appears to be considered equallyvalid for L2 writing pedagogy. The process of negotiation of meaning isparticularly important in L2 writing classrooms because L2 writers’comparative lack of composing skills is only one of the reasons why theirarguments are presented in a manner which is unclear or unsophisticated.Oftentimes, L2 writers have to simplify their content in order to bring itdown to a level their proficiency in language permits. If we just reword orcriticize their ideas without the process of negotiation, the chances are thatwe may indeed appropriate their texts.

When it comes to form, on the other hand, students often do notcomprehend, or else understand but do not know how to implement manynon-directive comments such as ‘wc’ (word choice) and ‘unclear’. This maynot be surprising at all because certain necessary words or structures areoften simply not there as L2 writers grope for translation. How are they

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supposed to correct their errors if they do not know where their errors are oreven how to correct them? I am not suggesting that we should alwaysprovide directive comments on L2 writers’ language problems. Rather, I amsimply suggesting that there are many L2 writers who desire to know whatthey are doing incorrectly and how they might learn how to correct their ownmistakes, and these students would like very much to have teachers whooffer them grammar correction tools, not ‘well-meaning bystanders’(Hyland 2003: 19).

Conclusion The stories presented and analysed earlier clearly demonstrate that some ofthe most widely-held beliefs concerning L2 composition pedagogy do notnecessarily reflect the realities of how L2 writers actually write and what theyactually need. We have learnt, for instance, that the following two claimsconcerning grammar correction are not true for all L2 writers: ‘Studentsfavor their intuitions over the thing they are told by writing teachers’ and‘ESL students were not particularly serious in the way they dealt withcorrections and more often than not were reluctant to do any rewriting,many seeing it as a form of punishment’ (Truscott op. cit.). This is clearly notthe case with the five writers who were hungry for higher levels of supportand assistance from their instructors with respect to grammar.

Let us return to the original question of why we should correct students’errors. Pedagogically speaking, grammar correction is one of the few wayswe can help L2 writers with language issues. Theoretically speaking, whileproducing papers, they are forced to pay attention to the forms with whichtheir intended meaning is expressed and thus make a great number ofhypotheses about the structure and meaning of L2 (Swain 1985). Grammarcorrection represents one of the most crucial forms of feedback for theverification of these hypotheses. Where else will they be able to get thosecrucial inputs if not from the teacher?

Even after a grammatical feature has been corrected, students may fail to useit accurately in their own writing, as noted by Truscott (op. cit.). This does notmean, however, that error correction is of little use. We need to rememberthat second language acquisition is sustained deep learning (Schumann1997), and it is characterized as sustained because of the extended period oftime that is required to achieve it.

Clearly, however, further work is necessary to enrich our understanding ofthe value of error correction in L2 composition classrooms. Note that theparticipants of the study were advanced L2 writers who were already quitefamiliar with the writing conventions of their discipline. It is also possiblethat they had placed such a high emphasis on grammar because some oftheir writing tasks, such as journal articles, required a high level of accuracy.Thus, the results may not be generalized to L2 writers with differentacademic needs.

Pointing out the problems of accuracy-oriented L2 composition teaching,Raimes (1983) argues that L2 composition teachers had stressed the L2 partof L2 composition at the expense of the composition part. Now, over 20 yearslater, the scenario appears quite different. As attested by the stories of thefive L2 writers analysed in this paper, the pendulum has now swung too farto the other side. Process-oriented L2 composition classrooms appear to

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place too much emphasis on the composition part of L2 composition, andthus it is time to place equal weight on the L2 part of L2 composition.

Final revised version received May 2007

ReferencesBates, L., J. Lane, and E. Lane. 1993. Writing Clearly:Responding to ESL Compositions. Boston: Heinle andHeinle Publishers.Ferris, D. 1999. ‘The case for grammar correction inL2 writing classes: a response to Truscott (1996)’.Journal of Second Language Writing 8/1: 1–11.Frodesen, J. and C. Holten. 2003. ‘Grammar and theESL writing class’ in B. Kroll (ed.). Exploring theDynamics of Second Language Writing. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.Hyland, K. 2003. ‘Genre-based pedagogies: a socialresponse to process’. Journal of Second LanguageWriting 12/1: 17–29.Kanoksilapatham, B. 2005. ‘Rhetorical structure ofbiochemistry research articles’. English for SpecificPurposes 24/3: 269–92.Leki, I. 2001. ‘Hearing voices: L2 students’experience in L2 writing courses’ in T. Silva andP. K. Matsuda (eds.). On Second Language Writing.Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Leki, I. and J. Carson. 1997. ‘Completely differentworlds: EAP and the writing experiences of ESL

students in university courses’. TESOL Quarterly31/1: 39–69.Polio, C. 2003. ‘Research on second languagewriting: an overview of what we investigate and how’in B. Kroll (ed.). Exploring the Dynamics of SecondLanguage Writing. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.Raimes, A. 1983. ‘Anguish as a second language?Remedies for composition teachers’ in A. Freedman,

I. Pringle, and J. Yalden (eds.). Learning toWrite: FirstLanguage/Second Language. New York: Longman.Schumann, J. 1997. The Neurobiology of Affect inLanguage. Malden: Blackwell Publishers.Swain,M. 1985. ‘Communicative competence: someroles of comprehensible input and comprehensiveoutput in its development’ in S. Gass and C. Madden(eds.). Input in Second Language Acquisition. Rowley:Newbury House.Truscott, J. 1996. ‘The case against grammarcorrection in L2 writing classes’. Language Learning46/2: 327–69.Zamel, V. 1982. ‘Writing: the process of discoveringmeaning’. TESOL Quarterly 16/2: 195–209.Zamel, V. 1983. ‘The composing process of advancedESL students: six case studies’. TESOL Quarterly17/2: 165–88.Zhu, W. 2004. ‘Writing in business courses: ananalysis of assignment types, their characteristics,and required skills’. English for Specific Purposes 23/2:111–35.

The authorSang-Keun Shin is an assistant professor at EwhaWomen’s University, Seoul, Korea, where he teachesELT methods and language testing. He earned hisPhD from the University of California at Los Angelesin 2004 and has published mainly in the area oflanguage testing and language teachingmethodology.Email: sangshin@ewha.ac.kr

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