When it comes to L1 and L2 differences in second-language writing, some researchers are not fully convinced that there is a fundamental difference. However, when comparing L1 and L2 writing, many would agree that macro- and micro-level writing characteristics exist and overlap (Eckstein and Ferris 2018). This article identifies some of the…

Jim Carroll noticed basic literacy errors in his Year 13s' writing, but on closer examination decided that these were not best addressed purely as literacy issues. Through an intervention based on clauses, Carroll managed to enable his students to write better, but he did this by teasing out principles of historical discourse that underpin…

An understanding of noun positions in sentences can correct many recurring problems in the writing of English language learners. This article outlines an approach for anticipating and preventing these sorts of errors while providing a framework to explain the errors to students. For this approach to be successful, students need to have an…

Research on the second writing process is not recent. Both first and second writing processes have been in the area of argument among scholars. It has been confirmed that both first and second writers nearly all practice similar physical activities pre-writing, during, and post writing stages; however, they still differ in the inner extra thinking…

I examine how American students respond to foreign instructors, who teach English Composition and Research Writing. I discuss how minority teacher's cultural, lingual, and ethnic differences interfere with classroom dynamics in the United States. I rely on my experiences as a Turkish instructor of composition at the University of Wisconsin,…

Errors made by language learners in learning a language are regarded as failure of competence. Linguists believe that errors are committed when the learner makes use of the learning strategies. By analyzing the learner's errors, we can better understand his inter-language and his learning process. It's necessary to understand the roots of errors…

Graduate students and new faculty in counselor education are often required to contribute scholarly works. However, graduate schools do not always provide appropriate preparation in scholarly writing. This article outlines the basic components of a scholarly manuscript or paper, identifies prevalent writing errors, and offers suggestions for how…

Large corpora such as the British National Corpus and the COBUILD Corpus and Collocations Sampler are now accessible, free of charge, online and can be usefully incorporated into a process writing approach to help develop students' writing skills. This article aims to familiarize readers with these resources and to show how they can be usefully…

Argues that the context of writing improvement helps explain writing error. Findings imply that undue efforts by teachers to prevent mistakes may hinder improvement. (RAE)

The authors offer research studies and other documented evidence that teaching grammar without a meaningful context does not improve student writing, largely because that approach does not address the root causes of errors. Several resources that support this position and offer more productive strategies are summarized, including the authors'…

This paper reviews research about how speaking a dialect can influence students' writing and how writing should be taught to students who speak a dialect of English. Literature on the writing errors commonly made by speakers of Black English and other American dialects is summarized. (PP)

Based on the premise that teaching basic writing involves first understanding what tends to go wrong when students write, a computer assisted system of error prediction and analysis was designed to improve college students' writing skills in both English and French. Students were to complete a sequenced series of writing assignments first in…

Describes three pilot projects carried out with a special version of a computer-assisted language-learning activity, known as SEQUITUR, that seeks to develop awareness of cohesive devices and coherence features by displaying the start of a text and offering possible continuations. Usage logs of responses given by native and nonnative speakers of…