Table Of ContentTreatment of Error in
Second Language
Student Writing
Second Edition
Dana R. Ferris
University of California, Davis
Series Editors: Diane Belcher and Jun Liu
Ann Arbor
The University of Michigan Press
Series Editors
Diane Belcher (Georgia State University) and
Jun Liu (University of Arizona)
Available titles in the series
Treatment of Error in Second Language Student Writing, Second Edition
Dana R. Ferris
Peer Response in Second Language Writing Classrooms
Jun Liu & Jette G. Hansen
Critical Academic Writing and Multilingual Students
A. Suresh Canagarajah
Controversies in Second Language Writing:
Dilemmas and Decisions in Research and Instruction
Christine Pearson Casanave
Connecting Reading & Writing in Second Language
Writing Instruction
Alan Hirvela
Genre and Second Language Writing
Ken Hyland
Teacher Written Commentary in Second Language Writing Classrooms
Lynn M. Goldstein
Connecting Speaking & Writing in Second Language Writing Instruction
Robert Weissberg
Technologies in the Second Language Composition Classroom
Joel Bloch
Assessment in the Second Language Writing Classroom
Deborah Crusan
Journal Writing in Second Language Education
Christine Pearson Casanave
Intercultural Rhetoric in the Writing Classroom
Ulla Connor
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Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2011
All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
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ISBN-13: 978-0-472-03476-5
2014 2013 2012 2011 4 3 2 1
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or
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without the written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ferris, Dana.
Treatment of error in second language student writing / Dana R.
Ferris. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-472-03476-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. English language—Study and teaching—Foreign speakers. 2. English
language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching. 3. Report writing—Study and teach-
ing. 4. English language—Errors of usage. 5. Second language acquisition.
I. Title.
PE1128.A2F474 2011
808'.0428071--dc23 2011023791
ISBN-13: 978-0-472-02973-0 (electronic)
To the scholars and teachers out there who are trying hard
to do the right thing on a sticky issue. You inspire me.
Series Foreword
Approximately a decade and a dozen books ago, our series
was launched with the publication of Dana Ferris’s Treatment
of Error in Second Language Student Writing. It is difficult
to imagine a more auspicious start for a series. As soon as
it appeared in print, Treatment of Error found an eager and
extensive audience and, since then, has continued to appeal
to a wide readership. Those who have read the first edition,
perhaps repeatedly as have many of us who view it as a trusted
guide to addressing multilingual writers’ language use issues
and to teaching others how to do so, should be more than
pleased to see Ferris’s updated and expanded second edition,
enhanced by insights from recent developments in areas such
as second language acquisition and corpus linguistics. Read-
ers for whom the second edition is their first experience with
this book—whether novice or seasoned teachers, specializing
in the teaching and learning of language, or just interested
in helping language learners produce more reader-friendly
texts—will likely find in this highly accessible, practitioner-
oriented resource the type of guidance that they are seeking
and are unlikely to find elsewhere.
No specific prior training is needed to benefit from the
research- and theory-informed journey Ferris takes us on
through the challenging terrain of responding to error. Far from
downplaying the challenge, Ferris heightens our appreciation
of the complexity of the undertaking—helping learners’ take
control of the syntactic, morphological, and lexical dimensions
of their texts—while at the same providing us with a highly
persuasive rationale for accepting this responsibility and an
impressive toolkit of approaches for facilitating our students’
progress. The goal of this book is not, as a facile interpreta-
vii
viii Series Foreword
tion of the title Treatment of Error might lead one to believe,
simply to make us more efficient and effective correctors of
our students’ grammar. The goal is instead to enable us to bet-
ter scaffold our students’ growing independence as language
analysts and self-editors, and ultimately as producers of second
language texts that speak for them and to readers in the ways
that they, as authors, want them to. Ferris’s expertise in this
area—responding to the linguistic needs of multilingual writ-
ers—and her understanding of the needs of those who teach
them make the goal of second language learner (and writer)
autonomy seem eminently achievable.
Diane Belcher
Georgia State University
Jun Liu
University of Arizona
Preface
My own interest in the treatment of error in second language
(L2) student writing began, literally, in various women’s
restrooms on several university campuses in the latter half
of the 1980s. This was where I and other ESL teachers would
talk about a dilemma that we all struggled with. We had been
trained to be “process approach” writing teachers (following
seminal works such as Zamel, 1982, and Krashen, 1984)—
encouraging multiple-drafting, revision, collaboration, and an
emphasis on ideas, with attention to language issues (grammar,
vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and other mechanics) being
intentionally postponed to the very end of the composing
process. What this often meant, in practice, was that grammar
and editing issues were almost never addressed by teachers
or their students in the ESL writing classroom. And yet, we
found, the students’ language problems were not magically
disappearing as the sure result of a more enlightened process
and view of writing. Worse, L2 writers themselves, painfully
aware of their own linguistic deficits and the need for teacher
intervention, were disappointed with instructional policies
such as, “I will not correct your journal entries, your freewrites,
or your early essay drafts. You should be focusing on express-
ing your ideas and building fluency and not worrying about
grammar until ‘later.’”
This simultaneous awareness of persistent written error
and of student frustration led to these whispered restroom
discussions:
“I’m teaching grammar in my writing class.”
“I am, too. I have to. They need it!”
To those of us trained in process philosophies and tech-
niques, error correction, grammar instruction, and editing
