The red pen

In Chapter 5 of Engaging Ideas, Bean discusses addressing issues of grammar and correctness in student writing, noting that “whatever the cause of the errors in students’ prose, eliminating them is a slow and difficult process. Partly as a response to this difficulty, contemporary composition theory has changed the way writing teachers approach sentence correctness” (p. 68). Though English teachers in the US have been able to change the focus of their commenting away from correcting students’ grammar, unfortunately, in foreign language classes students (and many teachers) expect to receive almost exclusively grammar feedback. While I recognize that studies show that this type of correcting does not result in improved grammar production by student, my students and colleagues view that style of correction as the best and most useful type, especially at the lower levels of foreign language classes. Once students are at the intermediate or advanced levels they are more willing to receive other types of feedback, such as advice on the structure of their writing.