The purpose of this study was to identify areas of APA formatting that college instructors view as most problematic in student writing. Using a Likert-style survey, the greatest areas of reported concern were problems with documentation, specifically, citations, references, and quoting; of lesser concern were various style and formatting errors in…

The study anchors on the Linguistic research tradition of Error Analysis (EA), focused on the grammatical errors, specifically on "verb tenses" manifested in the sentences of Japanese ESL learners. The entire respondent population was drawn from the pool of registered learners in 2017 at the Clark Institute of the Philippines Foundation,…

Social Networking Sites (SNS) have become popular among students and faculties, especially for all young population. SNSs are a relatively new technology, and little research has been conducted on the beliefs of the teacher candidates about using Social Network as an instructional tool. The study was conducted to find out for what purposes…

"The EUROCALL Review" is EUROCALL's open access online scientific journal. Regular sections include: (1) Reports on EUROCALL Special Interest Groups: up-to-date information on SIG activities; (2) Projects: reports on on-going CALL or CALL-related R&D projects; (3) Recommended websites: reports and reviews of examples of good practice…

Looks at the relationship between error and creativity in the writing of ESL students. Shows how syntactic and lexical constraints combined with students' cultural and aesthetic preferences to produce remarkable poetic effects in their writing. (SR)

Writing samples of 50 learning disabled college students were analyzed for fluency and errors of 14 types: omission of words and/or letters, noun plurals, syntax, subject-verb agreement, verb forms and tense, pronoun reference, shifts in person, fused or spliced sentences, fragments, punctuation, capitalization, usage, spelling, and apostrophe…

While peer review is a common practice in college composition courses, there is little consistency in approach and effectiveness within the field, owing in part to the dearth of empirical research that investigates peer-review processes. This study is designed to shed light on what a peer reviewer actually reads and attends to while providing…

Examines the sometimes puzzling behavior of writing teachers as they look for errors in language usage. Questions whether many of these teachers would notice the occurrence of certain features they call errors if they were not searching for errors in the first place. (RL)

Experiment designed to test efficacy of techniques of comprehensive error correction on combined grammatical and orthographic correctness of compositions written by intermediate-level college students studying German found writing skill development favorably affected by appropriate techniques. They are: systematic scoring of compositions;…

Discusses two types of student writing problems: error characteristics (spelling, pronoun usage, subject-verb agreement, run-on sentences, and capitalization) and nonerror characteristics (density of ideas, variety of referents, and variety of expression). Suggests ways to diagnose and correct them. (HTH)

Asserts that distinction between "error" and its social implications is false and that research and teaching based on that distinction is flawed. Considers how errors might be viewed as social in their production and correction, examines two ways in which this is elided in the literature, and explores how a social view of error might inform…

The use of connectives in 41 academic papers written for an English writing course by Japanese students ranging from university sophomores to graduate students was examined. Connectives were categorized as additive, adversative, causal, and temporal. Each connective type was subject to certain types of error. Additive connectives tended to be…

Illustrates the pitfalls of French grammar and syntax by reproducing a student's composition, which mangles the language. Draws from similarly frustrating experiences and from a "New York Times" article entitled "The Fumble-rules of Grammar" to compile a list of "General Principles for the Improvement of Oral and Written French Expression." (MES)

Presents results of a study on how accurately instructors in composition identified various kinds of errors. (RL)

Argues that English-as-a-Second-Language writing can have its own distinctive power and eloquence in spite of, and sometimes because of, its errors. Examines several different kinds of "poetic" nonnativisms, suggesting why they were created and why they may strike native speakers as especially expressive. (SR)