Journal of Second Language Writing
12 (2003) 267–296
The efficacy of various kinds of error feedback
for improvement in the accuracy and
fluency of L2 student writing
Jean Chandler*
New England Conservatory of Music and Simmons College, 15 Leonard Avenue,
Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Abstract
This research 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 one semester without reducing fluency or quality. A second study further
examines how error correction should be done. Should a teacher correct errors or mark
errors for student self-correction? If the latter, should the teacher indicate location or type
of error or both? Measures include change in the accuracy of both revisions and of
subsequent writing, change in fluency, change in holistic ratings, student attitudes toward
the four different kinds of teacher response, and time required by student and teacher for
each kind of response. Findings are that both direct correction and simple underlining of
errors are significantly superior to describing the type of error, even with underlining, for
reducing long-term error. Direct correction is best for producing accurate revisions, and
students prefer it because it is the fastest and easiest way for them as well as the fastest way
for teachers over several drafts. However, students feel that they learn more from selfcorrection, and simple underlining of errors takes less teacher time on the first draft. Both
are viable methods depending on other goals.
# 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Accuracy; Fluency; Second language writing; Error correction; Teacher feedback;
Student preferences; Asian college students
In 1996 Truscott wrote a review article in Language Learning contending that
all forms of error correction of L2 student writing are not only ineffective but
potentially harmful and should be abandoned. This was followed by a rejoinder by
*
Tel.: þ1-617-492-8153/699-3429.
E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Chandler).
1060-3743/$ – see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S1060-3743(03)00038-9
268
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
Ferris (1999), and 1998 saw the publication of several books that gave significant
attention to the topic (e.g., Ferris & Hedgcock, 1998 and James, 1998).
Although the conclusions Truscott drew from the findings of previous research
were sometimes unsupported by the data in the original studies (e.g., see footnotes
1 and 2 below), reviving interest in the topic was beneficial since teachers of L2
composition must decide whether, how, and when to respond to students’
grammatical and lexical errors. As Lyster and Ranta (1997) noted, the questions
had been framed by Hendrickson in 1978, and yet ‘‘nearly 20 years later, we are
hardly any closer to knowing the answers to these deceptively simple questions’’
(p. 38). Ferris (1999) wrote, ‘‘If nothing else, reading Truscott’s essay and
reviewing the primary sources he cites has highlighted for me the urgent need
for new research efforts which utilize a variety of paradigms to examine a range of
questions that arise around this important topic’’ (p. 2).
The one implicit point of agreement in Truscott and Ferris’ articles was that the
existing data are insufficient to resolve the question of whether error correction can
be an effective way to improve the accuracy of L2 writing. The present study
addresses this issue directly by presenting empirical data comparing the improvement in accuracy over a college semester of an experimental group that corrected
the grammatical and lexical errors marked by the teacher on each assignment
before writing the next assignment with a control group that did not. The first study
presented here addresses the question of whether to give error feedback or not, and
a second study sheds light on how it might be done. The second study examines the
effects of different kinds of teacher response to error on the correctness both of
revisions and of subsequent student writing. The four different kinds of teacher
response are: direct correction (hereafter Correction), underlining with marginal
description of type of error (hereafter Underlining with Description), marginal
description of type (hereafter Description), and simple underlining (hereafter
Underlining). Both studies also examine the effect of error correction on fluency,
and the second study measures change in writing quality over the semester using
holistic ratings. The second study also investigates student preferences and the time
required by student and teacher for various kinds of feedback methods.
Literature review
There are studies that did not find error feedback by the teacher to be
significantly more effective for developing accuracy in L2 student writing than
content-related comments or no feedback (e.g., Kepner, 1991; Polio, Fleck, &
Leder, 1998; Semke, 1984; Sheppard, 1992) but they need to be examined closely.
Kepner (1991) did not find that college students who received surface-level error
correction made significantly fewer errors in their journals than those who
received message-related comments, but the students apparently were not
required to do anything with the teacher’s corrections. Semke’s (1984) finding
of lack of effect of error correction on accuracy and negative effect on fluency
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
269
may not have been due entirely to the different treatment methods but also to the
differences in the quantity of writing practice. To receive A’s the group receiving
content-focused comments had to write twice as much as the groups receiving
corrections or corrections and comments; the group that self-corrected wrote
much less new material because of the time it took to make revisions. Similarly, in
Polio et al.’s (1998) study, the experimental group receiving error correction were
assigned to write half as many journal entries as the control group because of their
editing activities. Both groups in this study improved in accuracy, but there was no
significant difference between them. In Sheppard’s (1992) study, the only measure
on which there was a statistically significant difference between the gain of the
two groups was on percentage of correct punctuation.
On the other hand, there are studies demonstrating the efficacy of error
feedback from the teacher, for example, Ashwell (2000), Cardelle and Corno
(1981), Fathman and Whalley (1990),1 Ferris (1997), Ferris and Roberts (2001),
and Frantzen and Rissell (1987). These studies, however, measured accuracy only
on rewrites or on tests so it remains an open question whether students who got
error correction would write more accurately on future assignments.
Several studies (Ferris, Chaney, Komura, Roberts, & McKee, 2000; Ferris &
Roberts, 2001; Frantzen, 1995; Lalande, 1982; Lee, 1997; Robb, Ross, &
Shortreed, 1986) investigated the effects of different types of teacher feedback
on error in student writing. For example, Lalande’s (1982) experimental group of
U.S. students of German as a second language improved in grammatical accuracy
on subsequent writing after using an error code to rewrite, whereas the control
group, which received direct correction from the teacher, actually made more
errors on the essay at the end of the semester. However, the difference between the
groups’ improvement was not statistically significant. On the other hand, in
Frantzen’s 1995 study of U.S. college students of intermediate Spanish, both the
grammar-supplementation group receiving direct correction and the nongrammar
group whose errors were marked but not corrected improved in overall grammar
usage on the post essay. Neither group showed significant improvement in written
fluency over the semester, however. All four of Robb et al.’s (1986) treatment
groups of Japanese college students learning English improved in various
measures of accuracy after receiving different types of error feedback2 — direct
correction, notation of the type of error using a code, notation in the text of the
location of error, and marginal feedback about the number of errors in the line. All
of Robb et al.’s treatment groups improved in fluency and in syntactic complexity.
But neither the Lalande (1982) or the Robb, Ross, and Shortreed (1986) study
had control groups which received no correction, and neither found statistically
significant differences between the various teacher response types. Lizotte (2001)
1
Nevertheless, referring to Fathman and Walley’s research, Truscott concluded (1996, p. 339),
‘‘Nothing in this study suggests a positive answer [in favor of error correction].’’
2
Truscott concluded from the fact that there were no statistical differences between the four
treatment groups in Robb et al.’s study (1986, p. 331) — ‘‘grammar correction’s futility . . . showed’’
— even though there were increases in three different measures of accuracy by all four groups.
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J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
reported gains with Hispanic bilingual and ESL students of a low–intermediate
English proficiency. After introducing students to errors using a code, Lizotte
indicated only the location of errors for student self-correction. His students
reduced errors in their writing significantly over one semester at the same time
that they made significant gains in fluency (numbers of words written in a
specified amount of time). Like Robb et al., Lizotte did not have a control group
since he could not justify, either to himself as the teacher or to his students,
providing no error feedback.
Only Ferris and Roberts (2001) and Lee (1997) had control groups that received
no error correction. Lee (1997) studied EFL college students in Hong Kong and
found that students were significantly more able to correct errors that were
underlined than errors that were either not marked or only indicated by a check in
the margin. Ferris and Roberts (2001) studied ESL students from a U.S. university
and found that two groups that received corrective feedback (either on type of
error or on location) significantly outperformed the control group (no feedback)
on the self-editing task, but there were no significant differences between the two
experimental groups. Neither of these studies measured the effect of these
treatments on the accuracy of student writing over time.
The one study that dealt with the effects of various kinds of teacher feedback on
accuracy of both revision and subsequent writing, Ferris et al. (2000), claimed that
direct correction of error by the teacher led to more correct revisions (88%) than
indirect feedback (77%). This study has not been published, but Ferris (2002,
p. 20) discussed the findings: ‘‘However, over the course of the semester, students
who received primarily indirect feedback reduced their error frequency ratios
substantially more than the students who received mostly direct feedback.’’ This
2000 study was, however, descriptive rather than quasi-experimental.
One topic that is not controversial is L2 students’ views toward teacher
feedback on their written errors. Studies (Chenowith, Day, Chun, & Luppescu,
1983; Cohen, 1987; Cohen & Cavalcanti, 1990; Ferris, 1995; Ferris & Roberts,
2001; Ferris et al., 2000; Hedgcock & Lefkowitz, 1994; Komura, 1999; Leki,
1991; Radecki & Swales, 1988; Rennie, 2000) have consistently reported that
student writers want such error feedback. According to Ferris and Roberts (2001),
the most popular type of feedback was underlining with description, followed by
direct correction, and underlining was third.
Study one: Does error correction improve accuracy in student writing?
The first study presented here tries to fill a gap in the research by examining
three questions: (a) Do students who are required to correct the grammatical and
lexical errors marked by the teacher make fewer such errors in their writing later
in the semester? (b) Do students who do not correct these errors underlined by the
teacher make fewer errors on subsequent writing? and (c) Is there any significant
difference in the improvement in grammatical and lexical accuracy of the two
groups on their writing later in the semester?
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
271
Method
Subjects
The students were all music majors, first- or second-year students at an
American conservatory. To be placed in this course, they had either scored
between 540 and 575 on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or
they had completed a year-long intermediate English as a Second Language
(ESL) course at the same institution the previous year with a grade of B or
better, after scoring at least 500 on the TOEFL. One class (the control group)
consisted of 16 undergraduates from East Asia (Korea, Japan, China, and
Taiwan), and the other (the experimental group) contained 15 similar students.
Each class had only one male student. Although students were not randomly
assigned to the classes, there was no indication of systematic differences between
them, and both classes were taught by the same teacher-researcher.
Setting
These college ESL classes had a communicative orientation.3 The goal of the
course was to improve the ability of these high intermediate/advanced students to
read and write in English. In the ESL curricular sequence there was one additional
one-semester course between this one and the traditional first year composition
course required of all students at the conservatory. The classes met for 50 min
twice a week over 14 weeks. During these 24 h of class time, selections from
various autobiographical writings were read and discussed, both to practice
reading skills and to point out features of good writing. In addition, students
spent some class time reading reviews written by published writers and by other
students, sometimes watched videos of autobiographical stories, sometimes did
pre-writing activities, and occasionally discussed common errors in student
writing for 5–10 min. The goal of homework assignments was extensive practice
in reading and writing; students could choose an autobiography to read and review
and were assigned to write their own autobiography.
This genre was certainly not a new or particularly difficult one4 for these
students, who were highly literate in their own language and had previously read
biographies, autobiographies, and other narrative writing. At the same time, most
of these Asian students reported on a teacher-made questionnaire administered at
the beginning of the year that they had not had extensive practice in expressive
writing in high school in their first language (most said that their writing
experience was limited to ‘‘reports’’), and certainly not in English. The majority
3
The fact that the setting is a class with a communicative orientation may be important since Lucy
Fazio (2001) found no positive effect on accuracy of error correction on elementary school children’s
journals and concluded that it was due to their classes’ saturation with focus on form.
4
Studies with native English-speaking students (e.g., Craig, 1981; Quellmalz, Capell, & Chou,
1982; Stone, 1981) also found narrative writing to be relatively easier than other genres.
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J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
had had quite a bit of training in English grammar, however. Therefore, students
were given extensive practice in reading and writing in a genre and about content
they were familiar with in order to focus on improving both their reading and
writing fluency and the grammatical and lexical accuracy of their self-expression
in writing English.
Various invention strategies from a process approach to writing, such as free
writing or peer discussion in pairs before writing, were demonstrated in class.
Multiple drafts were assigned, but no peer reading was done on this autobiographical writing out of respect for student privacy and preferences. (Peer
feedback was required later in the semester before revision of book reviews
students wrote on the autobiographies they read.)
The teacher gave both content and error feedback on the first draft of the
autobiographical assignments. The teacher always gave a brief positive end
comment on the content of the writing. Although the teacher also occasionally
made more specific marginal comments on the content, praising vivid images or
word choices or asking for more detail or clarification, most of the teacher
feedback was on errors in grammar and usage because the writing generally was
otherwise quite acceptable. (See sample of student writing in Fig. 1).
Although the teacher underlined 16 errors in these 102 words, she considered
the content of the writing to be good. Similarly, Kroll (1990) found no correlation
between rhetorical competency and syntactic accuracy in essays written by
advanced ESL students, either at home or in class.
Grades on the autobiography were given only on the final product at the end of
the semester, and they were based on both quantity and overall quality, including
correctness. No deduction was made for errors on intermediate drafts; on the
contrary, the teacher emphasized that the goal was to learn from errors.
Design and measures
The ESL writing classes in which this study was conducted provided an
appropriate setting to test the research questions because the first five written
homework assignments were identical: Students were simply told to write
approximately five typed, double-spaced pages about their own life. (Although
various aspects of autobiographical writing, e.g., describing events, people, and
places, were discussed in class during the semester, any or all of these could be
used in each assignment, and students could write about their lives in any order,
not just chronologically.) Thus, over the semester, each student’s goal was to write
about 25 pages of autobiographical writing in addition to a book review.
Both classes were taught by the same teacher-researcher in the same way and
both received error feedback. The only difference was that the experimental group
was required to revise each assignment, correcting all the errors underlined by the
teacher before submitting the next assignment, whereas the control group did all
the corrections of their underlined errors toward the end of the semester after the
first drafts of all five homework assignments had been written. The rationale for
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
273
I was born in the end of culture revolution. Since my mother’s family is ‘the blacks’ instead of
‘the reds’, one of my grandparents three children was to send somewhere afar, of course, they let
the daughter in order to keep the sons close. My mother was sent to Gui Zhou. Right before the
due date, she was to go to shanghai to give birth where she would actually know someone. The
night before she leaves, she washed her sheets, packup, up till the woe hour, and certainly
before we both could scream, I was born around 6 O’clock in the morning.
Note: Used with permission
Fig. 1. Sample of student writing from the first assignment.
this arrangement arose from the results of a previous questionnaire, where the
teacher had ascertained that the vast majority of students wanted the teacher to
mark every error. Since the students felt so strongly about this, the teacher could
only justify the treatment of the control group by offering them the same treatment
as the experimental group later in the semester after the first draft of the fifth
assignment was completed and the data collection for the study ended. Therefore,
the control group corrected their errors in several homework assignments later in
the semester after the data for this study had been collected (see Fig. 2). For both
groups, after students had tried to correct their errors based on the teacher’s
underlining of them, the teacher provided direct correction for any remaining
errors or ones that had been corrected incorrectly.
In both cases, the fifth chapter of the autobiography was written 10 weeks after
the first chapter, and the same teacher-researcher tried to underline every
grammatical and lexical error on all student texts. Fig. 2 shows the schedule
of data collection and feedback for the two groups.
The dependent measure in this first study was a calculation of error rate on the
first and fifth writing assignments. Although the assignments were all to write five
pages, they did not in fact yield texts of exactly the same length; therefore to
control for these small differences in text length, a measure of errors per 100
words was calculated (total number of errors/total number of words 100).
One of the reasons Truscott gives for the putative harmful effects of error
correction is its negative effect on fluency. Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaki, and Kim
(1998) define fluency as ‘‘rapid production of language’’ (p. 117). For most
previous research studies, the measure of fluency used has been number of words
written. However, in this study, since length was stipulated in the assignment, a
different measure of fluency was used, i.e., the amount of time it took to write each
assignment.5 I investigated this question by asking each student to keep a record
of the total amount of time spent on writing each assignment. The time each
student reported spending on the first and on the fifth assignments was then
calculated per 100 words, and the change over the semester was used as an
5
Chenowith and Hayes (2001) also used words written per minute as a measure of fluency.
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J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
Class
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Experimental
Hand in chapter 1
Get errors underlined by teacher
Correct errors on chapter 1
Get direct correction by teacher
Hand in chapter 2
Get errors underlined by teacher
Correct errors on chapter 2
Get direct correction by teacher
Hand in chapter 3
Get errors underlined by teacher
Correct errors on chapter 3
Get direct correction by teacher
Hand in chapter 4
Get errors underlined by teacher
Correct errors on chapter 4
Get direct correction by teacher
Hand in chapter 5, end data collection
Get errors underlined by teacher
21
Correct errors on chapter 5
22
23
Get direct correction by teacher
Final draft of complete autobio
Control
Hand in chapter 1
Get errors underlined by teacher
Hand in chapter 2
Get errors underlined by teacher
Hand in chapter 3
Get errors underlined by teacher
Hand in chapter 4
Get errors underlined by teacher
Hand in chapter 5, end data collection
Get errors underlined by teacher; correct
errors on chapters 1 and 2
Get direct correction of chaps 1 & 2; correct
errors on chaps 3, 4 & 5
Get direct correction of chaps 3, 4 & 5
Final draft of complete autobio
Fig. 2. Data collection and error correction schedule.
additional outcome measure. Then the experimental group and the control group
were compared in terms of these changes over the semester in time spent writing
the same amount and kind of text.
Procedures: marking of errors
The categories of errors marked appear in Fig. 3. Fourteen of them are taken
from Azar’s Guide for Correcting Compositions (as cited in Brock & Walters,
1992, p. 123): singular–plural, word form, word choice, verb tense, add or omit a
word, word order, incomplete sentence, spelling, punctuation, capitalization,
article, meaning not clear, and run-on sentence. I added verb voice (active versus
passive) in addition to verb tense, word division in addition to spelling, and
sentence structure in addition to run-on sentences and fragments. I also added
categories of idiom, awkward (not grammatically incorrect but quite infelicitous
stylistically), subject–verb agreement, repetition or redundancy, pronoun, and
need for new paragraph in order to cover all the errors these students made even
though most of them were not frequent.
No argument is being made here that this error categorization system is better
or worse than other possible ones. It is more exhaustive than most; for example,
Ferris and Roberts (2001) used only five categories. The Asian students in the
present studies made frequent article errors so they were counted separately and
grouped (no matter whether they were errors of insertion, deletion, or wrong
article), whereas preposition errors were recorded as either insertion or deletion
errors or wrong word. Similarly, run-ons and fragments were recorded as separate
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
275
Fig. 3. Examples of error types.
error categories and not as punctuation and capitalization errors. No effort was
made to weight the different kinds of errors. What categorization system is used is
not as important for purposes of this study as using the same system for pre- and
post-measures.
Thus it was important for both studies to have the same teacher-researcher
marking all errors in the same way. Another rater who is a college ESL teacher
marked 10% of the papers in order to calculate interrater agreement. The
percentage agreement on what was an error was 76%. This was calculated by
dividing the number of errors marked by only one rater (and not both) by the total
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J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
number of errors (an average of each rater’s count), as Polio (1997) did. See also
Roberts (1999) for a discussion of the difficulty of getting high levels of interrater
reliability on accuracy measures.
One rater considered some things errors that the other one did not. For example,
the other rater marked many more article omissions than I did, especially with the
names of musical instruments in phrases such as ‘‘play piano,’’ ‘‘practice bassoon,’’
and ‘‘teach flute.’’ (I did not mark these as errors because of the results of a previous
study I had done on grammaticality judgments of article usage by native Englishspeaking musicians [Chandler, 1994].) He also marked more omissions of commas
as errors. On the other hand, I marked an error every time there was not a new
paragraph for a new speaker in dialogue, and the other rater did not.
Thus, having the same teacher-researcher marking all errors makes comparisons possible between methods and between pre and post results that would not
be as easy with more than one marker, given the difficulty of attaining high
interrater reliability in marking so many kinds of errors on spontaneous writing
production. High interrater reliability on categorization of errors naturally tends
to be even more difficult to attain than on identification of errors (Polio, 1997). For
this reason, no attempt is being made in these studies to draw conclusions about
types of errors that were corrected or improved over time.
What is important for these studies is intrarater reliability rather than interrater
reliability, and the intrarater correlation of two markings of the same paper
separated by several years’ time was .92 for categorization as well as identification of errors. A confirmation of this high intrarater reliability was done by an
independent rater on the teacher’s marking of essays by both the control and
experimental groups on the first and last assignments.
Results
Analysis of covariance was used to test for initial differences and differences in
outcome between the experimental and control groups. Tables 1 and 2 show the
results for accuracy, i.e., number of errors for each 100 words of text. There was
no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group on
the first assignment (t ¼ 2:05, P ¼ :175). The mean number of errors per 100
words for the control group was similar on the first and fifth assignments; there
was no significant difference between the control group’s error rates at the two
times (t ¼ 0:90, P ¼ :380).
The experimental group, on the other hand, went from an average of 7.8
grammatical and lexical errors per 100 words on the first assignment to 5.1 errors
on the fifth assignment, and this improvement in error rate between the two
assignments was statistically significant (t ¼ 4:05, P ¼ :001). A reduction of 2.7
errors per 100 words amounted to an average reduction of 34 errors on a five-page
paper from the first to the fifth assignment. Analysis of covariance (see Tables 1
and 2) also demonstrated a statistically significant (t ¼ 3:04, P ¼ :005) difference
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
277
Table 1
Accuracy: means and standard deviations on errors per 100 words for two groups and two testing
times
Group
ANCOVA outcomes
Experimental (n ¼ 15)
Control (n ¼ 16)
F
P
Chapter 1
Mean number of errors
Standard deviation
7.8
3.2
6.0
4.1
1.37
.183
Chapter 5
Mean number of errors
Standard deviation
5.1
1.8
6.9
4.6
1.45
.164
Change
Mean number of errors 2.7
0.9
3.04
.005
Table 2
Accuracy: analysis of covariance for error rate per 100 words
Source of variation
d.f.
SS
MS
F
P
Model*
Treatment group
Errors on chapter 1
Residual
2
1
1
28
177.74
56.50
78.23
242.40
88.87
56.50
78.23
8.66
10.27
6.53
9.04
.0005
.0163
.0055
Total
30
420.14
14.00
*
The model for this analysis hypothesizes that variation in change in error rate is caused by
the group the students are in (control or experimental) and their error rate on the first assignment
(Errors 1). The P values are statistically significant for Model, Group, and Errors 1, indicating that
this model has significant explanatory value. See text for interpretation.
in improvement in accuracy over the 10 weeks between the experimental group
(which corrected their errors between assignments) and the control group (which
did not). Nine of the 16 students in the control group actually had a higher error
rate on the fifth assignment than they did on the first, whereas only two of 15
students in the experimental group did. Moreover, in a striking contrast with the
control group, the experimental group showed much less variance between
students in their error rate by the end of the semester (see Table 1).
As an additional confirmation of these results, I regressed the change in the
number of errors from the first assignment to the last assignment for each group
(see Table 3). For the control group, neither factor explains much, but for the
experimental group, the number of errors on the first assignment and the intercept
are both significant. The negative coefficient on errors at time 1 suggests that the
improvement for the experimental teaching method falls as errors increase; e.g.,
students who have good skills to start with benefit more than ones who are less
proficient. However, the significant positive intercept suggests an improvement
for the experimental group regardless of the starting level.
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J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
Table 3
Regression of the change in the number of errors from chapters 1 to 5 for two groups
Control group
d.f.
SS
MS
Model
Residual
1
14
24.93
202.04
24.93
14.43
Total
15
226.97
15.13
Dependent variable ¼ change
Coefficient
S.E.
t
P
1.31
1.61
.21
.13
0.31
2.77
0.24
1.72
Experimental group
d.f.
Model
Residual
1
13
65.32
28.35
65.32
2.18
Total
14
93.67
6.69
Dependent variable ¼ change
Coefficient
0.68
2.58
SS
MS
S.E.
0.12
1.04
t
P
5.47
0.03
.00
.03
A two-sample t test indicates that the coefficient for Errors 1 in the control group is significantly
different from the coefficient for Errors 1 in the experimental group
N
Mean
S.D.
x
y
16
15
0.31
0.68
0.24
0.12
Combined
31
0.49
0.26
Satterthwaite’s d:f: ¼ 22:81. Ha: difference > 0, t ¼ 5:36, P > t ¼ 0:00.
Table 4
Fluency: means and standard deviations on minutes per 100 words for two groups and two testing
times
Group
ANCOVA outcomes
Experimental (n ¼ 14)
Control (n ¼ 12)
F
P
Chapter 1
Mean number of minutes
Standard deviation
36.9
24.5
37.4
18.7
0.00
.952
Chapter 5
Mean number of minutes
Standard deviation
20.8
13.1
20.3
8.9
0.01
.922
Change
Mean number of minutes
Standard deviation
16.1
2.6
17.1
3.9
0.01
.907
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
279
Table 5
Fluency: analysis of variance for time to write: minutes per 100 words
Source of variation
d.f.
SS
MS
Between subjects
Group
Errors on chapter 1
1
24
0.00
0.95
0.00
0.04
0.00
Within subjects
Time
Group Time
Errors on chapter 5
1
1
24
0.36
0.00
0.52
0.36
0.00
0.02
16.10**
0.01
**
F
P ¼ :001.
Tables 4 and 5 show that both groups increased significantly in fluency over the
10 weeks and that there was no significant difference between the two groups in
this improvement. The control group wrote the fifth assignment 17 min per 100
words faster than the first assignment (t ¼ 3:65, P ¼ :004), and the experimental
group improved by 16 min for the same amount of text during the same time
period (t ¼ 2:50, P ¼ :027). The fact that the standard deviations were high
indicates either that students spent very different amounts of time on an assignment or that they calculated the time differently (e.g., one student may have
included thinking time while another may have counted only drafting time) or
both. This fact, however, does not invalidate the finding since the same students’
self-reports on the first and last assignments are being compared.
Summary and discussion
The results of this study demonstrate that the accuracy (correctness of English)
of student writing over 10 weeks improved significantly more if these high
intermediate East Asian college students were required to correct their errors than
if they were not. The fact that the control group, which did no error correction
between assignments, did not increase in accuracy while the experimental group
showed a significant increase would seem to refute the assertion that having
students correct errors is ineffective. Moreover, this increase in accuracy by the
experimental group was not accompanied by a decline in fluency over the
semester, as measured by self-reports of time students spent writing the same
amount and kind of text. On the contrary, both the experimental and the control
groups in the present study showed a significant increase in fluency over the
semester, a finding which corresponds to those reported in Robb et al.’s (1986)
research on Japanese EFL students and Lizotte’s (2001) study of Hispanic
bilingual and ESL students in a U.S. community college.
Although conventional wisdom in the field advocates that teachers respond to
content first and to form only in a later draft (Sommers, 1982; Zamel, 1985), there
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J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
is no indication that this is necessary, at least when students are writing in a genre
which is relatively easy for them, such as the autobiographical writing in this study
or the journal writing in Fathman and Whalley’s 1990 research. In both of these
studies, comments on content and accuracy were given simultaneously, and when
that was done in Fathman and Whalley’s study, student rewrites improved in both
content and accuracy. In a recent study, Ashwell (2000) found no significant
difference in student gains in accuracy or content scores on a third draft following
three different patterns of teacher feedback on the first two drafts: (a) the conventional response (giving feedback on content first and feedback on form in a later
draft), (b) the reverse pattern, or (c) one in which form and content feedback were
mixed. All of these patterns, however, were superior to giving no feedback.
What the findings of the present study suggest is that if students did not revise
their writing based on feedback about errors, having teachers mark errors was
equivalent to giving no error feedback since the students’ new writing did not
increase in correctness over one semester. (This probably explains Kepner’s 1991
findings since she gave rule reminders as error correction feedback but did not
require revisions.) If students did make error corrections, their subsequent new
writing was more accurate without a reduction in fluency.
In summary, mere practice resulted in a significant increase in fluency for both
groups; that is, at the end of the semester they were able to write the same amount
and kind of text (in the same context of a homework assignment) in much less
time, according to self-reports. However, mere practice without error correction
did not produce more correct subsequent writing, whereas when students corrected their errors before writing the next assignment, their first drafts became
more accurate over the semester.
Study two: The effects of various kinds of error correction
Having answered, in the affirmative, the question of whether to have students
correct their errors, the research turned to the question of how the teacher should
give error feedback. Should teachers simply correct the errors or should they mark
the errors for student self-correction? If the latter, is it more effective for a teacher
to indicate the location or the type of error or both?
Method
Design and subjects
In this second study, these questions are approached by looking at change in the
accuracy of both revisions and subsequent new writing over the semester, change
in the fluency of student writing as measured by self-reports of the time it took to
write the same amount and kind of text, change in the quality of student writing as
measured by holistic ratings, student attitudes toward four different kinds of
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
281
teacher response, the time it took students to make the corrections after each kind
of response, and the time required of the teacher to make the various kinds of
responses.
This second study was conducted in the same ESL writing course as the one
reported above but in a different year with different students. Part of one class
session was spent explaining the different kinds of errors listed in Fig. 3. Each
student received a sheet listing the abbreviations and an example of each error.
Besides the teacher feedback described below, the other major difference between
the two studies was that in the second study students were asked to write 40 pages,
instead of 25, of autobiographical text over the semester. In response to five
identical homework assignments, they wrote about eight pages of text each time6
and revised them after receiving feedback from the teacher and before writing the
next assignment, as the experimental class had done in the first study (after the
teacher underlined all their errors). Requiring rewriting, no matter what kind of
teacher feedback, including direct correction, ensured that the student read the
teacher’s response carefully, though there was no penalty for errors on the first
draft. As described above, the grade was based on the quality (including
correctness) and quantity of the final draft after students had made as many
revisions as they chose.
The second study was done with a total of 36 students in two sections of the
same course taught in the same way by the same teacher. The first class contained
1 Hispanic and 20 Asian undergraduate students, 18 females and 3 males, and the
second class had 15 East Asian students, 13 females and 2 males.
In this partially balanced incomplete block design, each student received four
different kinds of teacher feedback, in different orders, in response to the first four
chapters of his or her autobiographical writing. Having each student receive each
kind of feedback ensures that the treatment groups are identical as well as
ensuring a larger number of students in each group than if the 36 students had
been divided into four treatment groups. It is important to give the treatments
in different orders so as not to confound order and type of treatment. The
four treatments used were (a) Correction (see e.g., Fig. 4), (b) Underlining
with Description (see Fig. 5), (c) Description of type only (see Fig. 6), and
(d) Underlining (see Fig. 7).
The outcome measures were: (a) number of errors per 100 words on both the
revision and on the subsequent chapter before revision (accuracy), (b) holistic
ratings of overall writing quality of the first draft of both the first and last chapters
of each student’s autobiography, (c) time students reported spending writing each
chapter (fluency), (d) immediate student responses to each feedback type,
including the time it took to make corrections, and to a questionnaire comparing
the four types at the end of the semester, and (e) a rough comparison of time spent
by the teacher in giving each method of feedback, both initially and over two
drafts.
6
Lengthening the assignment from five to eight pages should increase the effect of each treatment.
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J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
Fig. 4. Correction.
Fig. 5. Underline and Describe.
Fig. 6. Describe.
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
283
Fig. 7. Underline.
Teacher responses
Response 1=direct correction
Response 2=underline and describe
Response 3=describe
Response 4=underline
Number of students receiving different orders of responses
Number of students
1
2
1
2
1
2
3
3
4
Order of response types
1243
1432
2431
2143
3241
3214
3124
4321
4312
Number of students receiving each response after each assignment
Response 1 Response 2 Response 3 Response 4
After assignment 1
4
4
6
6
After assignment 2
6
4
6
4
After assignment 3
6
5
4
5
After assignment 4
4
7
4
5
Fig. 8. Teacher responses.
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J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
Procedures
Holistic ratings
A holistic rating session was conducted according to the guidelines of the
Educational Testing Service. All six of the raters were experienced college ESL
teachers. When holistic ratings are done, the papers are rated relative to others in
the same rating pool. Therefore, in order to measure change in writing quality
over time, it is necessary for all of the papers written in response to both the first
and the last assignments to be in the same rating pool, allowing later for direct
pre–post comparisons for each student. From similar papers in the first study,
anchor papers were chosen, which the researcher regarded as good examples of
each rating, and the raters were trained on them. Two independent raters then
rated each paper on a scale of 1–6 (with higher being better), and their scores were
averaged. If the ratings were more than one point apart, a third rater also rated the
paper, and all three ratings were averaged.
Different teacher responses
Approximately equal numbers of students got each response type after each of
the four first assignments. See Fig. 8 for numbers of students getting various
orders of responses. Therefore, change in number of errors per 100 words on the
assignment following each response type is used as an outcome measure rather
than change in errors from the first assignment to the second, etc.
This analysis was done only on the 20 students who corrected all their errors
after each response before writing the next assignment, as intended. These 20
included 4 males and 16 females, 4 students from Taiwan, 2 from the People’s
Republic of China, 6 from Japan, 1 from Mexico, and 7 from Korea.
Results
Overall effects on accuracy, fluency, and quality
Since all of the students corrected their errors before writing the next
assignment in this second study, I wanted to see if they showed the same
improvement as the experimental group in the first study. Indeed, student
writing improved significantly over the semester in terms of both accuracy and
fluency. A t test of the difference in the mean number of grammatical and
lexical errors per 100 words on chapter 1 (10.1) and on chapter 5 (8.0) was
statistically significant at the .05 level (see Table 6). Students took significantly
less time to write the same amount of text in each succeeding chapter — from
37 min per 100 words in the first chapter to 15 min per 100 words in the last
chapter. A t test showed this improvement in fluency over the semester to be
statistically significant at the .0003 level. These results with a different group
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
285
Table 6
Changes in accuracy, fluency, and quality
Accuracy
Chapter 1 (n ¼ 36); mean number of errors per 100 words ¼ 10.1; S.D. ¼ 5.5
Chapter 5 (n ¼ 29); mean number of errors per 100 words ¼ 8.0; S.D. ¼ 4.3
P ¼ .05
Fluency
Chapter 1 (n ¼ 21); mean time to write 100 words ¼ 36.7 min; S.D. ¼ 16.2
Chapter 5 (n ¼ 9); mean time to write 100 words ¼ 15.0 min; S.D. ¼ 6.2
P ¼ .0003
Quality
Chapter 1 (n ¼ 36); mean holistic rating ¼ 2.8 (out of 6)
Chapter 5 (n ¼ 36); mean holistic rating ¼ 3.1 (out of 6)
confirm with a larger sample of 36 the finding for the experimental group in the
first study.
In this second study, I also wanted to find out if the reduction in error rate
translated into a measurable improvement in writing quality as judged by holistic
ratings, or conversely, if students were making fewer errors and writing more
quickly because their writing was less complex or otherwise of lower quality at
the end of the semester than it had been at the beginning.
Results showed no significant change in holistic ratings over the semester,
though the ratings for the final assignment were slightly higher than those for the
first; on a six-point scale the mean ratings for chapter 1 were 2.8 and for chapter 5
were 3.1. Thus there was no evidence that the writing at the end of the course was
less interesting or complex, judging from holistic ratings. The interrater correlation was .8; since at least two raters scored each paper, the reliability estimate for
the composite rating was .9 (Rosnow & Rosenthal, 1999, p. 143).
Effects of various kinds of teacher feedback on revision and
subsequent writing
Table 7 indicates, not surprisingly, that students made significantly fewer errors
on their revisions if the teacher had written in corrections. The mean number of
Table 7
Analysis of variance with repeated measures: effect on accuracy of revisions
Teacher response
Mean errors per 100 words in revisions
S.D.
Correction (n ¼ 34)
Underlining and Description (n ¼ 27)
Description (n ¼ 27)
Underlining (n ¼ 30)
1.1
3.1
4.9
4.6
2.4
3.8
4.7
6.3
Fð4; 73Þ; P ¼ :004.
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J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
errors per 100 words on the first draft of the first chapter was 10.1. After
Correction, student text still had 1.1 errors per 100 words. The next most explicit
method of teacher response, Underlining with Description, produced the next
fewest errors on the revision: 3.1 per 100 words, indicating that students could
correct more than two-thirds of their errors in response to this method. Revisions
of papers marked only with Description of error type contained 4.9 errors per 100
words, while Underlining produced text with 4.6 errors per 100 words on the
revision, showing that students were able to correct more than half their errors if
only the type or location was pointed out. Analysis of variance shows these
differences to be significant at the .004 level.
However, the best measure of what students learned from various teacher
responses to error in their writing is their ability to write a later, different text more
correctly (as opposed to the revision of the same chapter; see Tables 8 and 9).
This analysis was done by comparing each student’s error rate after each
treatment with the same student’s error rate on the previous assignment (since
students got the treatments in different orders). Table 8 demonstrates that for the
group as a whole, treatments of either Correction or of Underlining resulted in
more accurate writing on the next assignment, while the other two treatments,
which involved describing the error type, had the opposite effect. Multivariate
analysis of variance showed these differences between treatment groups to be
statistically significant at the .04 level. MANOVA showed significant differences
between Correction and Underlining with Description, between Correction and
Description, between Underlining and Underlining with Description, and
between Underlining and Description, but not between Correction and Underlining or between Description and Underlining with Description.
Similarly, Table 9 shows that nine students produced their most correct
assignment subsequent to having the teacher simply correct the errors on the
assignment before, and seven students did so after the teacher feedback of simple
underlining, whereas the other response methods involving description preceded
the most accurate writing for only one to three students.
These results complicate the picture from the first study and from the data in
Table 6 above, both of which show that the writing of students who correct their
errors in response to teacher feedback generally increases in accuracy over the
semester.
Table 8
Multivariate analysis of variance with repeated measures: effect on accuracy of subsequent
assignment
Teacher response
Mean change in errors per 100 words
S.D.
Correction (n ¼ 20)
Underlining and Description (n ¼ 20)
Description (n ¼ 20)
Underlining (n ¼ 20)
2.0
0.9
1.8
1.6
3.8
4.0
3.8
3.0
Note. Negative numbers indicate improvement. Fð3; 31Þ; P ¼ :037.
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
287
Table 9
Change in errors per 100 words from previous assignment for individual students after each feedback
method
Student
After
Correction
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
0.55
2.73*
0.13*
3.12
5.61
2.25*
4.85*
5.08*
5.64
0.35
9.13*
4.70*
4.49
0.86
0.05
0.62
0.20
0.90
4.27*
8.25*
After Underlining
with Description
1.02
0.95
2.62
0.54
0.70
0.96
3.73
1.64
4.00*
0.37
6.66
12.45
0.79
6.39
3.35
1.45
0.52
3.32
4.02
0.82
After
Description
After
Underlining
0.17
0.30
7.05
7.07
7.65
2.93
0.72
3.18
1.26
1.17
7.57
1.40
2.40
4.08*
0.96
1.45
2.17*
1.50*
1.11
8.10
4.02*
1.75
0.38
7.11*
5.64*
0.76
3.03
1.76
2.90
1.74*
0.38
0.14
7.64*
2.99
2.18*
1.02*
2.12
1.09
1.47
3.32
Note. Negative numbers indicate improvement (fewer errors).
*
Best feedback method for individual student.
Student preferences
Twenty-one students filled out questionnaires comparing the four different
teacher response methods at the end of the semester (see Table 10). They were
asked which of these ways made it easiest for them to correct their mistakes,
which way made it easiest to see what kind of mistakes they had made, which way
they learned the most from, which way helped them most to write correctly in the
future, and which way they liked the most. More than two-thirds of the students
considered the Correction response to be the easiest to correct; this agreed with
the objective data, as reported above. However, half or nearly half thought
Underlining with Description was the easiest way to see what kind of errors
they had made, that they had learned the most from this response, and that it had
been the most help in writing correctly in future. As shown above, the latter was
not an accurate judgment since the data show that both Correction and Underlining were significantly more effective at reducing error in subsequent writing
than Underlining with Description was. Half said they liked Correction the most,
with Underlining with Description second.
One student’s comment seemed to sum up the feelings of the majority: ‘‘I like
the ‘correction’ the most because it’s easier to change, but I have to say the
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J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
Table 10
Students’ responses
Year-end questionnaire (n ¼ 21)
1. Which way was easiest to correct mistakes?
Correction
Underline and Describe
14
5
Describe
0
2. Which way was easiest to see what kind of mistakes you made?
Correction
Underline and Describe
Describe
7
10
3. Which way did you learn the most from?
Correction
Underline and Describe
2
9
0
Describe
5
4. Which way helped you most to write correctly in future?
Correction
Underline and Describe
Describe
4
10
5. Which way did you like most?
Correction
Underline and Describe
10
7
2
Describe
2
Underline
1*
Underline
3*
Underline
5
Underline
5
Underline
1*
Questionnaires after each teacher response method (n ¼ 16)
6. Could you understand it?
Correction
Underline and Describe
Describe
Underline
Yes
Mostly
Not much
No
14
5
1
4
2
11
13
9
0
0
1
3
0
0
0*
0
Yes
Mostly
Not much
No
7
4
5
9
8
7
6*
6
Did you feel discouraged?
Correction
Underline and Describe
Describe
Underline
1
0
0
0
0
5
4
1
Mean number of minutes students reported needing to make corrections to one assignment after each
method (n ¼ 14).
Correction: 47.5; Underline and Describe: 59.3; Describe: 78.6; Underline: 58.6.
*
Missing cases ¼ 1.
underline and describe helped me the most; I like that.’’ Another student agreed
that the Correction method was the easiest to correct ‘‘because you’ve already
written out the correct answers for us’’ and therefore she liked it best because it
took less time. She also agreed that Underlining with Description made it quite
easy to understand the mistakes she made. However, she felt that she learned the
most from the teacher response of Underlining ‘‘because I can look up for the
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
289
Table 11
Teacher’s response time
Teacher’s response
Mean time per 100 words (min)
Correction
Underlining and Description
Description
Underlining
0.9
1.0
1.0
0.8
correct answers by myself, and this makes easier to remember the mistakes I made
so I won’t do it again.’’
In addition to the comparative questionnaire at the end of the semester, students
were asked to fill out a questionnaire immediately after experiencing each teacher
response and keep a record of how much time it took them to correct errors after
each method. They were asked if they understood the method, if they knew how to
make the corrections, if they needed to make many corrections, and if they felt
discouraged. They were given four response categories of (1) yes, (2) mostly or
somewhat, (3) not much or not too much, and (4) no.
Only the responses of the 16 students who filled out each of the four
questionnaires on time were tabulated. Again, not surprisingly, a large majority
of students answered ‘‘yes’’ that they understood the Correction response and said
they knew how to correct their errors after receiving it, whereas in response to the
other three teacher feedback methods, the majority replied that they ‘‘mostly’’
understood and that they ‘‘mostly’’ knew how to make corrections.
What was more interesting and puzzling7 was that there was less discouragement after receiving teacher feedback of Underlining than after either Description
or Underlining with Description. In fact, after both Underlining and Correction,
94% of students (all but one) said they were not at all discouraged or not much.
After receiving the methods involving description, on the other hand, a third to a
quarter (4–5 students) said they felt ‘‘somewhat’’ discouraged.
According to student self-report, the mean time to correct errors varied from
47.5 min after Correction to 78.6 min after Description, with Underlining and
Underlining with Description in the middle at 58.6 and 59.3 min, respectively.
Teacher time required for different responses
The fastest way for teachers to respond to student errors on one draft, not
surprisingly, is simply to underline them (see Table 11).
Correction is the second fastest way. It took the teacher an average of 0.8 min
per 100 words for Underlining, whereas Correction required 0.9 min per 100
words, and both Underlining with Description and Description alone took 1.0 min
7
In hindsight, I wish I had interviewed some students about this, but by the time I analyzed these
data, all 36 students had departed for the summer.
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J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
per 100 words.8 Thus, given the assignment of 2000 words per chapter, it takes an
average of 16 min for the teacher to respond to one student’s first draft by
Underlining, 18 min by Correcting, and 20 min by Description or Underlining
with Description. For a class of 20, that is 5.3 h for Underlining, 6 h for
Correcting, or 6.7 h for Description of error type per assignment, or 26.5, 30,
or 33.5 h, respectively, for marking the class’s first draft on five assignments.
On the other hand, since students made significantly fewer errors in the next
revision after receiving Correction than the other feedback methods, total teacher
time responding to errors over two drafts of the same assignment is undoubtedly
less using Correction on the first draft than any of the other treatment methods.
Summary and discussion of findings and implications for practice
The first study shows that to increase accuracy in student writing teachers
should give error feedback and require students to make corrections. However,
according to the results of the second study, the question of whether to respond to
errors or not is too simplistic since not all error correction methods had the same
effect in increasing accuracy.
According to the results of both studies, having the teacher either correct or
underline for student self-correction all the grammatical and lexical errors in the
autobiographical writing of high intermediate to advanced ESL undergraduates,
followed by revision, resulted in a significant improvement in both accuracy
(errors per 100 words) and fluency (time to write 100 words) in subsequent writing
of the same type over the semester. Perhaps an average improvement of two errors
per 100 words does not seem like much over a semester, but when an assignment
is 2000 words, that is an average decrease of 40 errors from the first to the fifth
assignment.
In spite of an overall improvement in accuracy and fluency in the second study
from the first to the last assignment, there was no significant change in holistic
ratings of overall writing quality over 10 weeks. This is not surprising since other
studies have shown that writing quality is slow to show measurable effects (see
Hillocks, 1986) and since autobiographical writing is a genre that these students
were already relatively good at (see samples of their writing in Figs. 1 and 4–7).
(These same students have, however, shown significant improvement over one
semester in holistic ratings of other kinds of writing, such as analysis of poetry,
about which they were not as knowledgeable from the beginning.) Since there was
a gain of .3 over the semester on a holistic rating scale of 1–6, I conclude that the
improvement in correctness and speed did not come at the expense of overall
quality or syntactic or lexical complexity.
8
Clearly, what takes the most teacher time in any of these methods is identifying the error.
Correcting the error takes a little additional time but not as much as describing it. After it is identified
and described, the act of underlining adds nothing additional in such a crude measure.
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
291
In the first study a control group that did no revision after error feedback between
assignments made no improvement in accuracy on first drafts over the semester.
(This finding is similar to Ashwell’s, 2000 and Ferris & Roberts,’ 2001 ‘‘no
feedback groups,’’ which did not make significantly fewer errors on later drafts
of the same paper.) More surprisingly, results of the second study showed that
rewriting following teacher feedback methods of either marginal description of type
of error or even of such description plus underlining resulted in more errors on the
subsequent assignment even though students made fewer errors on revisions of the
same assignment. (For speculation as to causes of these results, see below.)
I’m guessing that the results indicate that two different processes were going on:
(a) In the case of direct correction, the students simply noticed the correct forms
as they transferred them into their next drafts — positive evidence, input for
acquisition. (b) In the case of underlining without description, the students relied
on previously acquired competence to self-edit (as native speakers tend to do,
when they correct their own writing). The two intermediate forms — providing
description but not the correction — simply muddied the water for the student
writers . . . In fact, one could argue that the descriptions with underlining actually
made the task harder for the students than simple underlining.9
The suggestion in the literature (e.g., Ferris, 2002) that students learn more (i.e.,
make fewer errors on subsequent writing) from either finding their own errors or
making their own corrections, rather than receiving corrections from the teacher,
was not borne out either in this study or in Robb et al. (1986). In fact, in the present
study, Correction by the teacher was the best of the four methods used, as measured
by the change in accuracy of the student writing which followed, though there was
no statistically significant difference between Correction and Underlining of
errors. The superiority of the Correction method may be due to the fact that,
not surprisingly, students are able to correct significantly more of their errors on
their revisions after this method than after teacher responses either describing the
type or noting the location of errors made, or both. Perhaps when ESL students can
see their errors corrected soon after writing, they internalize the correct form better.
Perhaps the greater cognitive effort expended in making their own corrections is
offset by the additional delay in knowing whether their own hypothesized
correction was in fact accurate. Correction by the teacher was also the most
popular with the students, probably because it was the fastest and easiest way for
them to revise.
Those in the literature who argue against students’ self-correction do so
because of its putative negative effect on student attitudes and fluency. Student
self-correction had no such negative effect in the present study. Although a
majority preferred the teacher to correct their paper because it was the easiest way
for them, they also felt that a teacher response of Underlining with Description
was the best way to learn not to make the errors in the future. One student
9
An anonymous reviewer of a previous draft put it this way,
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J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
commented, ‘‘I think if I can have Underline and Describe or Underline but not
just Correction, I’ll feel more helpful. Just Describe I need really long time to
correct; only Correction I feel I can’t learn them and I feel I don’t participate.’’
This finding that students felt they were learning more when self-correcting is in
accordance with Lalande’s (1982) study of American college learners of German
as a second language and with Ferris and Roberts’ (2001) and Leki’s (1991)
studies of ESL students’ preferences.
In the literature, fluency is usually a measure of how much students write. Not
surprisingly, students tend to write more when their writing is not being marked
for any kind of surface error than when it is. My measure of fluency was different:
Since students were assigned to write a certain number of pages, fluency was
measured by how long students said it took them to write the assignment.
Although this was a crude measure that had the problems of self-reports (students
probably interpreted in different ways the request to record their writing time and
some were undoubtedly more careful in keeping track than others), it also had
great face validity. Students appreciated this improvement in writing since one of
their greatest difficulties with English is how long it takes to do reading and
writing assignments. Over the course of the semester, students were able to write
the same amount of text in approximately half the time — while all of their texts
were being marked for surface error. Thus, student self-correction, as well as
correction by the teacher, was associated with both generally positive attitudes
and significant improvement in this measure of writing fluency.
Perhaps students judged Underlining with Description to be the best method of
teacher response to error to help them improve their writing in the future partly
due to the order of the questions on my questionnaire: The questions ‘‘Which way
did you learn the most from?’’ and ‘‘Which way helped you most to write
correctly in future?’’ followed ‘‘Which way was easiest to see what kind of
mistakes you made?’’ A majority of students answered ‘‘underline and describe’’
to all three questions. It is understandable that Underlining with Description
would be the easiest way to see what kind of errors had been made. However, this
response was not as effective as either Correction or Underlining in actually
increasing student accuracy on subsequent writing and took somewhat more time
for both students and teacher. Perhaps the categorization of types of errors
confused or distracted students on their next assignments — although Underlining with Description did help more than Underlining in revisions of the same
writing. Slightly more students reported being ‘‘somewhat’’ discouraged when
the teacher feedback involved description of errors than either Correction or
Underlining.
In fact, marginal description of type of error had the most negative effect
on accuracy of subsequent writing of any of the feedback methods used in
either study, perhaps because of student attitudes toward it. Maybe even students
who have studied English grammar extensively in the past find it too cognitively demanding to identify an error from a description without location.
It took students far longer to correct their errors after this method of teacher
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
293
response than any other tried in this study, and both methods involving description took slightly more time for the teacher to give than either Correction or
Underlining.
In summary, what the second study shows is that among the methods tried
in this study, Correction resulted in the largest increase in accuracy both
for revisions and for subsequent writing. Naturally, it was the easiest for
students to understand and make corrections, and therefore they tended to like
it best. It was also presumably the fastest way overall for the teacher to respond
when multiple drafts were involved. Underlining is a viable alternative, at least
for students who are advanced enough to do self-correction (we saw from the
first study that the students who made the fewest errors at the beginning
benefited the most from having their errors underlined and correcting them)
and for the kinds of errors they can self-correct.10 In the second study, it was
nearly as effective as Correction for improving accuracy on subsequent
writing. It could be argued that Underlining was effective only because some
students in the second study had previously received more explicit treatments,
but the experimental group in the first study was exposed only to Underlining
throughout the semester, and they also showed a significant increase in
accuracy. Underlining takes less teacher time on the first draft, and, more
importantly, students feel they are learning more when they are involved in
self-correction.
Therefore, the decision of which of these two methods to use should be made in
the context of the other goals of the course (e.g., whether writing or language is the
primary focus) and the amount of time one wants the students to devote to
grammatical and lexical error correction. Or, of course, one can use a combination
of Underlining for errors the students can self-correct and Correction for those they
cannot.11
What seems to be a crucial factor, as was shown in the first study, is having the
students do something with the error correction besides simply receiving it. When
students incorporate the feedback in revisions, even when receiving direct
correction from the teacher, error feedback on writing is a way to draw attention
to form without distracting students from their original communicative intent.
(It could in fact demonstrate to students the teacher’s commitment to helping them
express that intent.) Moreover, helping them notice a mismatch between their
interlanguage and the target language might well facilitate second language
acquisition. After the teacher either corrected the errors or underlined them
for student self-correction, subsequent student writing was both significantly
more correct, in just 10 weeks, and done significantly more quickly, with a slight
increase in the quality of the content.
10
After doing this research, I now have a better idea which errors those are, but that is a topic for
another study. The interaction between a student’s proficiency level and ability to self-correct is
another topic which needs further study.
11
In a subsequent class, all students were satisfied with this combination method.
294
J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003) 267–296
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a teacher-research grant from the Massachusetts Association of Teachers to Speakers of Other Languages (MATSOL). The
author is also grateful for the comments of several reviewers and for the statistical
help of Terence Tivnan and Richard Palmer.
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