Eden Vaughan TESL 340 Article Review Summary This article discusses the importance and the process

for teaching students to self edit their own work. The importance of teaching students especially ESL students to self edit is so that they can keep up with mainstream societal expectations when it comes their writing. Too many times ESL students are expected to write like mainstream students and are stigmatized for not being able to do so. Also, many ESL students also rely mainly on their teachers and tutors to correct their grammatical errors but they need to learn how to do it themselves or they will never succeed in the real world. Ferris has come up with a process to teach students how to self edit their own work. Ferris lists several philosophical approaches as to why to teach students to self edit and they are very important in his process. The assumptions are Students and teachers should focus on major patterns of error rather than correcting every single error, Because not all students will make the same errors, it is necessary and desirable to personalize editing instruction as much as possible and The errors to focus on should be those that are most frequent, global and stigmatizing (Ferris 18). This is really important when you are looking at the process itself because as a reader you can understand the reading behind it. There are three simple stages that Ferris maps out. Stage one is that the teacher needs to focus on form through many activities on editing not correcting the errors but talking about why they are errors in sample essays. Knowing the why for students is so important for them to understand how to use grammar properly. The second step is recognizing major error types which basically mean teaching students their error tendencies focusing on the global and then going to the local. Errors will be different for 1

each student so we need to focus on each students tendencies. The last step is to have the students find and correct errors in their own work.

Reaction/Opinion This article I feel is useful for many teachers who are not English majors in terms of teaching students how to self edit. For me being an English major I felt that this just reiterates everything that we go over in the English methods course. Many of the points that Ferris makes are made in these classes that are geared to the mainstream classes especially focusing on the global errors and once you have those under control moving to the local errors. Students whether they are ESL or mainstream have issues when it comes to grammar no matter how old they are so it makes a lot of sense to treat each students grammar issues separately because what one student struggles with may not be the same thing another student struggles with. I do think that this article is useful for students in the education program that did not choose to be English majors as this is something their methods classes would not go over even though the new theory of writing is that every teacher is a teacher of writing. This can help them understand what to do and how to best assist their students if they do not get it in their teacher prep classes like I do.

Discussion Questions 1. What types of grammar mini-lessons might you include within this process to help students better understand their errors? 2. Should we teach grammar in the traditional way dubbed the skill and drill method or should we take a more progressive approach? Why or why not? 3. What types of modifications could you make to the activities that were provided by Ferris? 4. Every teacher needs to find their own teaching groove do you feel that this type of editing process fits in yours? Why or why not? What would you need to do to make it fit? 2