Youre Rotten to the Core I Donã¢â‚¬â„¢t Know You Anymore and Never Again

What this handout is about

When y'all ask students writing in English every bit an additional language what they would similar to work on, they will oft say that they'd similar you lot to check their grammar. "Checking the grammar" can experience uncomfortably shut to proofreading and editing students' papers for them—which writing coaches know is strictly out of premises. Unfortunately, multilingual writers have been unfairly denied admission to linguistic communication feedback because of the very strong prohibition against editing, but the practiced news is that we can nevertheless be very helpful without compromising our principles.

This page provides a fleck of of import historical context for the discussion and offers strategies for responding to the grammar-checking request in ways that respect the pedagogical philosophies of the writing center and the instructional needs of students writing in a foreign linguistic communication. The list of strategies is followed past excerpts of coaching sessions, with annotations that illustrate how some of the strategies piece of work in existent conversations between writing coaches and multilingual writers.

1984: The triple whammy for multilingual writers

In 1984, several of the most influential texts in writing center history were published. You will probably recognize the kickoff two because the vocabulary and the philosophy are still driving forces in today'due south writing centers:

1. Reigstad & McAndrew: Division of the writing procedure into "higher order" and "lower order" concerns, establishing a value-laden sequence of content and arrangement earlier grammer and punctuation.
2. Due north: Staunch announcement that writing centers were not centers for mechanical remediation and mistake correction. "In a writing center, the object is to make sure that writers, and not necessarily their texts, are what get changed by didactics…our job is to produce ameliorate writers, non better writing" (p. 69).
3. Friedlander: Assertion that writing centers come across the needs of strange students by focusing on mechanical remediation and error correction. The content of students' essays should be discussed only as much as necessary for authentic error correction.

The writing procedure was divided, the writing center's territory was firmly staked, and the perceived needs of multilingual writers were placed squarely outside the parameters of the writing center's mission, pedagogical philosophy, and standard procedure. No wonder nosotros've struggled so much!

In fairness to the scholars to a higher place, they meant to emphasize that writers should concentrate on developing their ideas before they worried about comma splices, and to emphasize that truly practiced writing involved the long-term evolution of a complex set of skills. These ideas are still so powerfully present in writing centers today considering they are and then very true. Unfortunately, they had the unintended effect of marginalizing discussions of sentence structure, discussion choice, punctuation, and grammatical errors until very late in the writing process.

In truth, ideas can not be separated from the language used to express them. Multilingual writers are avant-garde linguistic communication learners who are working toward the command of a sophisticated range of vocabulary, sentence structures, field of study-specific expressions, idioms, etc. Multilingual writers are also developing writers, so they practice need the same kind of process-oriented and "higher order" feedback that monolingual writers need. Quite often, though, their ability to develop the content of their essays is express by a lack of vocabulary or by difficulty with circuitous sentence structures. Every bit coaches, you tin can back up the evolution of writing skills past talking virtually language at whatever point in the writing process where information technology might be helpful.

Information technology's good to discourage premature business concern with nit-picky editing decisions, only it's swell to encourage exploration of the right language for expressing a slap-up thought. Be flexible and be comfy with the fluid, back and forth movement between discussing the ideas and the language.

What do yous do when students say, "Simply check my grammar"?

1. Respond positively. ("Sure, nosotros tin can take a wait at the linguistic communication stuff…"). Lectures about how we teach proofreading strategies or how we don't really do grammar in the writing heart put students on the defensive when they accept a legitimate need for feedback on their language utilise. Only say aye, and move on to the next stride.
2. Arm-twist other concerns. ("What else would you similar to talk near today? Are you still working on the content?"). Students will often identify quite a range of concerns with uncomplicated prompting at the beginning of the session, especially after they've been reassured that you'll help them place problems with a linguistic communication they're nevertheless learning.
3. Ask for an overview. ("Tell me about what you're working on and where you are in the procedure."). Explaining their writing project (the assignment and the text then far) gives students the hazard to produce "comprehensible output"—a gamble to use the English linguistic communication to express their thoughts conspicuously and to make themselves understood. We know that language learners are able to understand a lot more they are able to spontaneously produce in a foreign language, and it's actually hard piece of work to limited complex thoughts sufficiently in a linguistic communication that's not your own. By asking questions, by listening carefully, and by request follow-upward questions, y'all can help students work through the process of communicating clearly in English, and you tin can give yourself a mental framework of the project that volition be helpful when language questions arise in specific parts of the text.
4. Read the unabridged draft. You may find grammatical errors on the first or second page, merely keep reading. You'll get a sense of the educatee's complete argument, and you'll take time to recognize more than serious errors that may occur later in the paper.
5. Stop only for extreme bug. Sometimes a judgement may be so malformed that the idea is completely obscured. You can make a annotation to come back to that point afterwards, but if y'all do decide to stop, ask a broad question and and then listen carefully ("Tin can you lot tell me more than nearly this idea?"). Effort to exist attuned especially to places where the student'due south language use is truly interfering with your ability to empathize what they're trying to say. Clarifying these expressions takes priority over small-scale errors that don't actually interfere with your agreement.
6. Recast the student's explanation more grammatically. ("Permit me see if I sympathize yous correctly. You're saying that…"). If you understood and explained correctly, the student tin can hear the idea expressed in grammatical English and can make annotation of it—they tin add it to their English linguistic communication repertoire. Even so, if your recasting (your paraphrased explanation) doesn't match the pupil'southward intended meaning, or if yous can reasonably offer two different interpretations of the text, yous can examine the passage more than closely to figure out why it was unclear. So you lot can work together on correcting whatever is confusing about the student's original expressions. This back and forth procedure is called "negotiation of meaning" ("Is this what you lot mean?" "No, I hateful this." "Oh, okay. We say it like this." "Oh, okay. Thank you.")
7. Provide "linguistic input"—language that students read and hear. This "input" might exist $.25 of English that are new to them (like a new word or idiomatic expression), or it might be familiar bits of English being used in means they've never heard before. You are not usurping control if you make language suggestions that convey the student's ideas. If yous've listened carefully enough that you know what they're trying to limited, assist them out.
8. Use resources. Even if you lot know the grammar, introduce students to language resource they tin can use independently at other times.
9. Document the puzzles. If you encounter especially interesting or disruptive samples of linguistic communication use, keep a re-create to share with your colleagues and mentors. Information technology may serve as a useful training sample, so you're serving the community well.

What if students really mean, "Just check my grammar"?

At that place does come a time writers are ready to concentrate strictly on their grammer. They're satisfied with everything else, and as writers, y'all know that'south a happy identify to exist. Usually we teach proofreading strategies to native speakers at this stage. We can do this with multilingual writers too, merely we also accept to adjust our strategies to suit their status as language learners. These suggestions are meant to help you with that aligning.

There'southward a strong misconception that at that place will exist "patterns of fault"—certain types of errors that occur repeatedly in the text. Sometimes that does happen, but more frequently, there volition only be one or ii instances of twenty 5 different kinds of mistake. That's okay. You tin still exploit the educational value of an error, having confidence that students will endeavor to employ what they learn to their subsequent writing.

Two things to note: First, even though the strategies listed below concentrate more on directly proofreading and grammar checking, remember that you can as well utilise all of the strategies listed to a higher place for correcting the grammer by clarifying the intended meaning. 2d, when you practise observe an error, you can ask, "How practice you normally proofread for this kind of mistake?" or say to the student, "Permit'southward try to detect a few more examples of this structure, just to double-check them." Await for correct and wrong examples because we need our successes reinforced besides! It's a dandy opportunity to assess the student's proofreading skills and do some strategy building.

Remember of these strategies as being listed in the order they should exist used in, but feel comfortable to experiment with the order, depending on the educatee, the writing project, and your own judgment. Play with them to run into how each strategy helps enhance the students' learning experience.

1. Ask students to identify specific feedback targets ("Show me what you lot're not sure about."). You can enquire a multifariousness of questions: why they're not sure virtually that sentence, if they tin can think of other ways to express the thought, what rules they know about the particular grammer structure, if they checked a reference book, if they can show yous the page so you lot can look at the rules together, etc. In other words, you can learn a lot about the students' idea processes that will be helpful in working with each of them. One caution: be sensitive to how much time you're spending on these questions. It can exist frustrating to students if every single mistake is interrogated at length, as you can imagine. Idioms and prepositions are great candidates for a motorbus'south quick corrections because they're then idiosyncratic. Structures that follow a set of rules more systematically, similar verb tense or gerunds vs. participles, are skilful candidates for more questioning. (Locate the grammar references in the Writing Center if y'all didn't empathise "gerunds vs. participles"!)
2. Ask where they struggled to make language choices. Sometimes they really do believe they've written everything in correct English language, then they can't point to a sentence they think might be wrong. If yous ask them to testify you where they had to work at it, you accept a chance to interrogate their decision-making process ("Why was this a difficult choice? How else were y'all thinking of saying it? What made yous choose this mode?") and to either congratulate them and reinforce a correct choice, or to correct them and maybe teach them a trick for making the right choice side by side time (a mnemonic device, a smashing page in your favorite reference volume, etc.).
3. Identify "high gravity" errors–errors that truly interfered with your comprehension. Piece of work with the student to figure out how/why the sentence construction or word choice is obscuring their intended meaning. When they've explained their thought enough that you understand it, offering them the language they need to express their idea grammatically.
4. Motion on to repeated errors. Enquire questions near their choices or their full general knowledge (eastward.one thousand., "Why did you choose this verb tense?" or "What do you know most verb tenses?"). Ask the student if they take a favorite grammer resource and/or share your ain favorite grammar resource. Work through correcting the error together, helping the student understand and apply the rules. Find a couple more than examples of the same kind of mistake and let the student use the resource to try correcting the mistakes. When they feel confident that they can notice and correct that blazon of error, move on to another.
5. Give prepositions away like processed. Introduce students to "learner's dictionaries," which include information about word + preposition combinations, but feel comfortable freely offering up these important little words. Learning to use "upwards" correctly in one sentence will not ensure that students will utilise it correctly in some other judgement in the aforementioned style that learning nearly other structures will, and this trivial act of kindness can help students stay more engaged with the rest of the process.

The strategies in action

These transcripts are excerpted from sessions with second language writers. They accept been annotated to explain a bit near what was happening, what the students were trying to accomplish, what the coaches were trying to accomplish, and to illustrate a few of the concepts and strategies listed above. Read each excerpt without reading the comments, just to get the flow of the conversation. Read them once again, looking at each of the marginal comments as you reflect on the information on this page.

Resources

See our English language Language Resources folio for several learner'southward dictionaries and other language learning resource and strategies.

You lot can find very clear explanations of grammer structures and an EXCELLENT collection of idioms and phrasal verbs, which ESL students usually struggle with, at UsingEnglish.com.

References

Friedlander, A. (1984). Coming together the needs of strange students in the writing centre. In G. A. Olson (Ed.) Writing centers: Theory and assistants (pp. 206-214). Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Due north, South. (1984). The idea of a writing center. College English language, 46, 433-446.

Reigstad, T. J., & McAndrew, D. A. (1984). Training tutors for writing conferences. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English language.

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