Can Advanced ESL Students Become Effective Self-Editors?
Abstract
Today’s ESL writing teachers and students as well as content-area professors and textbook publishers generally agree that systematic attention to accuracy in student writing is both necessary and possible, even in a process-oriented composition classroom. The author has developed an integrated approach to teaching editing skills to advanced ESL writing students. The present study investigates the effectiveness of this approach. A group of 30 students in two sections of a semester-long ESL freshman composition course were taught systematically to identify, prioritize, and attempt to correct their most serious and frequent errors. Their compositions were collected throughout the semester (3 to 5 papers per student, for a total of 136 essays), and analyzed to see if they were able, over the course of the semester, to reduce the number of errors they made. The results showed that most students were successful in reducing their overall percentages of error; further, significant differences in their performance on in-class versus out-of-class writing were noted.