The debate continues between those who believe in giving corrective feedback to students to improve their written accuracy and those who do not. Indeed, the results of the many experimental studies on written corrective feedback carried out over the last 20 years have been so contradictory that second language teachers looking to support their…

Debate about the value of providing corrective feedback on L2 writing has been prominent in recent years as a result of Truscott's [Truscott, J. (1996). The case against grammar correction in L2 writing classes. Language Learning, 46, 327-369] claim that it is both ineffective and harmful and should therefore be abandoned. A growing body of…

To understand students' reaction to feedback, path analysis was used to generate models of student writing activity. Results suggest that Taiwan business English writing students may implement proofreading and self-directed redrafting behaviors aimed towards improving their writing when objective sentence-level error feedback is supplied with no…

Uses experimental and control group data to show that students' correction of grammatical and lexical error between assignments reduces such error in subsequent writing over he semester without reducing fluency or quality. Further examines how error correction should be done. (Author/VWL)

A study of miscorrection in group writing activities among 18 third-year English majors in a Thailand university is consistent with studies of miscorrection in spoken activities. The relatively small amount of miscorrection found suggests that peer feedback can play a role in the development of writing ability. (22 references) (LB)

Makes an appeal for corpus-based research with the objective of helping local English-as-a-Second-Language teachers deliver pedagogically sound error correction feedback to their students. Two examples are provided to illustrate how a teacher can use corrective feedback to help learners self-monitor their own written English output. (Author/VWL)

In an age when the paperless office is fast becoming a reality, the need for a paperless writing course has arisen. This paper presents an easy and inexpensive way to design a paperless writing course by taking advantage of the annotation feature available on many word processors, such as Microsoft Word or Lotus Ami Pro. The annotation feature…

Drawing from a review of the literature on feedback in two fields, English education and social psychology, this paper sets forth a set of theoretical conclusions and practical suggestions for developmental English instructors and others to use in providing feedback to composition students. First, the research on written feedback in English…

Investigated university English-as-a-Second-Language students abilities to self-edit texts across three feedback conditions: errors marked with codes from different categories; errors in the same five categories underlined but not otherwise marked or labeled; no feedback. Both feedback groups outperformed the no-feedback group in self-editing;…

A discussion of the use of feedback in process-oriented second language writing instruction focuses on students' need for feedback, the most effective ways of providing it, appropriate timing for feedback, and how students use this information. Literature on feedback in process-oriented writing instruction is reviewed in light of each of these…

Teachers and students agree that despite the time-consuming nature of providing written commentary and revising using this commentary, teacher feedback is both desirable and helpful. Nonetheless, teachers express concerns about how to provide commentary in ways that their students can effectively use to revise their texts and to learn for future…

Suggests an approach to compositions that addresses the special character of intermediate foreign-language writing through process assignments that involve strategic corrections and a series of interrelated, in-class writing activities, including expansion exercises intended for use during the revision period. This essay design also coordinates…

Error correction research has focused mostly on whether teachers should correct errors in student writing and how they should go about it. Much less has been done to ascertain L2 writing teachers' perceptions and practices as well as students' beliefs and attitudes regarding error feedback. The present investigation seeks to explore the existing…

A one-year study is reported that addresses whether and in which way grammatically computer-assisted language learning (CALL) can help English writing instruction in a Taiwanese setting. Results of a CALL courseware intervention with first-year college students suggest that classroom instruction combined with grammatical CALL is at least not…

Profiles students' awareness of the functions and influences of expert input in their writing. Data include results of a survey of foreign-language and English-as-a-Second-Language writers' beliefs about feedback behaviors known to interact with revision processes. Results indicate that each group perceives expert response as serving distinct…