Dialogue

A response to Truscott

Jean Chandler*

New England Conservatory of Music and Simmons College,

15 Leonard Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

I am happy to have the opportunity for a dialogue with Truscott on the topic of error

correction. His review of the literature (1996) was part of the impetus for publishing my

research since Language Learning provided no opportunity for dialogue at that time.

As a teacher of second language learners in a post-secondary institution, I agree with

Truscott that ‘‘the efficacy of error correction is a central issue for the theory and practice of

writing instruction.’’ (I would not necessarily make this claim for first language learners or

for other ages and populations of second language learners.) But for my students, writing

provides a major avenue of learning language, and they are convinced, as are most such

students (see studies cited in my literature review, Chandler, 2003, p. 270), that receiving

error feedback on their writing is an important way to learn English. I would hasten to add

that error correction is only a small, though important, part of the instruction I offer, which I

would characterize as a communicative approach (see my footnote 3, Chandler, 2003,

p. 271, on Fazio’s conclusion).

As a researcher, I certainly agree that evidence on the efficacy of error correction comes

from comparisons between the writing of students who have done error correction and

those who have not. However, it is difficult for teachers to give no feedback because of the

strong desire of most students to have corrective feedback. Therefore, in my first study, I

did the closest thing I felt I could do: I underlined the errors of one group but asked for no

correction of them until the end of the semester, when the data collection for the research

was over. Moreover, I told the students that we would edit for correctness after all five

assignments were written, implying that their attention to these markings was not required

until later. I have no reason to think that the students in this group did pay attention to the

errors that were underlined in pencil, since nobody asked me any questions about them and

they continued to make the same errors in subsequent writing. Although students who got

this treatment did not improve in accuracy from the first to the fifth assignment of

autobiographical writing, they did the same amount and kind of writing in much less time,

according to self-report.

Journal of Second Language Writing 13 (2004) 345–348

* Tel.: þ1 617 492 8153; fax: þ1 617 492 8153.

E-mail address: jeanchand@aol.com (J. Chandler).

1060-3743/$ – see front matter # 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.jslw.2004.05.001

Students in the experimental group in the first study received exactly the same under-

lining treatment in the same context by the same teacher. The only difference was that they

were asked to correct the underlined errors before writing the next assignment. After doing

four such assignments, there was a significant improvement in the accuracy of their writing

on the fifth assignment, and like the first group, they improved in fluency as well. In my

study, both groups did the same amount of new writing, unlike in the research of Semke

(1984) and Polio, Fleck, and Leder (1998). So I concluded from these data that writing

practice alone, while contributing to increased fluency, had no effect on accuracy, whereas

having students correct their errors, not just receive corrective feedback, as in the research

of Kepner (1991) (whose feedback was in the form of rule reminders), resulted in

significantly more correct subsequent writing in just 10 weeks.

What other interpretation of these data is plausible? Truscott argues that all grammar

correction is harmful but that the ill effects might be offset by writing practice or other

exposure to English or manifested by avoiding error through shorter and simpler writing. I

have already explained that there was no difference between the two groups in the first study

in terms of the amount of writing practice they got and that neither group produced shorter

writing, but rather both improved in my measure of fluency. My students were studying

music at a US conservatory and were not necessarily receiving considerable exposure to

academic English in other classes or in their daily lives that would have helped them in this

writing task. They were unlikely to have been taking any other liberal arts course, except

possibly art, since this course to increase the accuracy and fluency of their English was a

prerequisite to taking other courses that required much reading or writing, including music

history. Almost all the students came from East Asia, and when they were not practicing

their instrument, they tended to spend most of their time with other students from their

country. In any case, whatever exposure they had should have affected both groups equally.

If one were counting only a few types of errors, like Sheppard (1992) did, Truscott’s

avoidance theory might be plausible. However, in both studies, I counted all the lexical and

grammatical errors the students made (see Fig. 3, Chandler, 2003). So if some students

learned to avoid some of their many types of errors, I count that as an increase in accuracy.

Wanting to examine the possibility that my students were avoiding error by simplifying

their writing, I had all the pre- and post-essays in the second study holistically rated. In my

second study, like that of Robb, Ross, and Shortreed (1986), all of the students received

corrective feedback of different kinds, and all improved in fluency. Some types of

corrective feedback in my second study were followed by more accurate writing on

the next assignment, and some were not. Yet, a holistic rating of the overall writing quality

of their pre- and post-essays showed a slight improvement over the 10 weeks. (As others

who have done holistic ratings know, it is hard to achieve significant improvement in this

measure in a short amount of time unless the students are learning a new genre.) The results

of this holistic rating are an indication, not proof, that the writing did not become simpler. I

did not calculate any measures of syntactic complexity, as Robb et al. (1986) did. The

writing of all of their groups, which received corrective feedback, improved in syntactic

complexity. So there is no indication from this study that students getting these four kinds

of corrective feedback wrote simpler or shorter texts to avoid errors. Quite the contrary.

This study of Robb et al. (1986) had no control group receiving no error feedback, and

therefore it does not prove that it was the error feedback that produced the positive changes

346 J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 13 (2004) 345–348

for all groups in accuracy, fluency, and syntactic complexity. So how can Truscott use the

results of this study to demonstrate the opposite, i.e., that correction was unhelpful and

even harmful? Truscott says (p. 8) that one of the groups in Robb et al.’s (1986) study

‘‘received so little information from correction. . .[that] this group can therefore be treated

as a control group.’’ I suppose he is referring to the group that received what Robb et al.

deemed the least salient feedback, i.e., recording the number of errors in each line.

According to the authors (1986, p. 86), ‘‘Students were requested to reread each line of

their composition to search for the places in need of revision. Once an error was located, the

students had to correct it.’’ I do not understand why this treatment group is considered by

Truscott to be a control group while the group in my first study, which was not asked to

attend to my underlining of errors, was not. At any rate, the fact that there was no significant

difference in the improvement shown by Robb et al.’s four treatment groups is not

evidence, as Truscott claims, that none of the treatments were beneficial. Since all groups

improved with different forms of corrective feedback, I fail to see why it is more plausible

that all of the feedback was harmful than that it was beneficial. Similarly, Lalande’s (1982)

study comparing one group which used an error code to rewrite and another which received

direct correction from the teacher showed no statistically significant differences, and there

was no control group; so this study proved nothing about the efficacy or inefficacy of

corrective feedback.

Sheppard (1992) compared two methods of feedback (one involved both the type and

location of each error and the other relied on general requests for clarification) and found

that there was no significant difference between the groups in gain on the percentage of

correct verb forms or on the ratio of subordinations to the total number of sentences, but

group B (n ¼ 13) made significantly more improvement in percentage of correct sentence-

boundary markers (periods, semicolons, and question marks were considered equivalent;

fragments were ignored) than did group A (n ¼ 13). Sheppard contrasted his findings with

those of Fathman and Whalley (1990), who found that 100% of the students who had their

errors underlined (n ¼ 36) had higher grammar scores on their rewrites, as compared to

66% of the students who received no feedback (n ¼ 14). Although the difference in the

results of these two studies could have been because Sheppard was measuring only two

discrete errors (plus a measure of complexity, on which he found no significant differences)

whereas Fathman and Whalley were measuring grammatical accuracy more generally, it

may also have been due to the type of corrective feedback the students received. As my

second study showed, all forms of corrective feedback may not be equal, a point Truscott

seems largely to ignore. My second study showed a significant gain in the accuracy of

subsequent writing after students had either had their errors underlined or corrected

directly by the teacher and they had revised them, but there was no such gain if the students

had corrected errors after corrective feedback involving description of type, even with

location.

Truscott fails to mention recent studies by Ashwell (2000), Ferris and Roberts (2001),

and Lee (1997); all of which, like Fathman and Whalley (1990), found that groups

receiving corrective feedback significantly outperformed, in terms of accuracy on rewrites,

groups receiving no feedback. Rather, he mentions only the studies he claims support his

view, and he sometimes distorts their findings or fails to take into account other

explanations for them. In short, I find his assertion that previous research offers no

J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 13 (2004) 345–348 347

support for correction plus revision being beneficial and his ‘‘nonspeculative’’ point that

my studies offer ‘‘no basis for claims that correction is helpful’’ (p. 7) to be unfounded.

I accept the argument that the efficacy of error correction for accuracy of subsequent

writing will only be demonstrated by studies containing a control group which receives no

correction and experimental groups which, I would suggest on the basis of my second

study, correct their errors after either receiving direct correction or having the location of

their errors pointed out. So I hope someone will do such a well-designed study. In the

absence of that, what I find most plausible from my own and others’ research, as well as

from my own experience in learning foreign languages and in teaching English, is what

Hendrickson (1978) concludes from his review of the literature (p. 389): ‘‘Correcting

learners’ errors helps them discover the functions and limitations of the syntactical and

lexical forms of the target language (Kennedy, 1973). Error correction is especially useful

to adult second language learners because it helps them learn the exact environment in

which to apply rules and discover the precise semantic range of lexical items (Krashen and

Seliger, 1975).’’

References

Ashwell, T. (2000). Patterns of teacher response to student writing in a multiple-draft composition classroom: Is

content feedback followed by form feedback the best method? Journal of Second Language Writing, 9(3),

227–257.

Chandler, J. (2003). The efficacy of various kinds of error feedback for improvement in the accuracy and fluency

of L2 student writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12, 267–296.

Fathman, A. K., & Whalley, E. (1990) Teacher response to student writing: Focus on form versus content. In B.

Kroll (Ed.), Second lanquage writing: Research insights for the classroom (pp. 178–190). Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Ferris, D. R., & Roberts, B. (2001). Error feedback in L2 writing classes. How explicit does it need to be?

Journal of Second Language Writing, 10(3), 161–184.

Hendrickson, J. M. (1978). Error correction in foreign language teaching: Recent theory, research, and practice.

Modern Language Journal, 62, 387–398.

Kepner, C. G. (1991). An experiment in the relationship of types of written feedback to the development of

second-language writing skills. The Modern Language Journal, 75, 305–313.

Lalande, J. F. (1982). Reducing composition errors: An experiment. Modern Language Journal, 66, 140–149.

Lee, I. (1997). ESL learners’ performance in error correction in writing: Some implications for college-level

teaching. System, 25, 465–477.

Polio, C., Fleck, C., & Leder, N. (1998). If I only had more time: ESL learners’ changes in linguistic accuracy on

essay revisions. Journal of Second Language Writing, 7, 43–68.

Robb, T., Ross, S., & Shortreed, I. (1986). Salience of feedback on error and its effect on EFL writing quality.

TESOL Quarterly, 20, 83–91.

Semke, H. (1984). The effects of the red pen. Foreign Language Annals, 17, 195–202.

Sheppard, K. (1992). Two feedback types: Do they make a difference? RELC Journal, 23, 103–110.

Truscott, J. (1996). The case against grammar correction in L2 writing classes. Language Learning, 46, 327–

369.

348 J. Chandler / Journal of Second Language Writing 13 (2004) 345–348