Many teachers of basic writing are preoccupied with error. Before marking any errors in a student's composition, the teacher should read it carefully, try to understand the student's intention in writing it, and respond in those terms. Priorities for analysis should be consistent with the teacher's priorities for teaching and be set in terms of…

At Grade 11 and above, it is necessary to determine what deficiencies exist in auditory and reading comprehension and in speaking and writing skills, and to take compensatory steps. Suggestions are given for French teaching. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Describes a study of how the verb-form variables of tense, aspect, mode, person, number, and stem and suffix irregularities interact for lower-level students of Spanish to determine if performance can be improved by asking students to monitor an individual variable when many of such variables must be integrated in a particular exercise. (SED)

Errors made by the foreign language learner are classified and discussed. (RM)

A brief explanation of how the Garden Path second-language correction technique induces students to make errors that teachers can immediately correct precedes an exploration of why the strategy works, its usefulness in teaching grammatical structures, and its compatibility with an interactive approach to foreign language teaching. (25 references)…

This article reviews different procedures to sample and evaluate a student's spelling skills. Suggestions for further analysis of error patterns in spelling to determine possible causal or maintaining factors, guided by the Spelling Analysis Flowchart, are discussed. By utilizing this hypothesis-driven process, appropriate and effective…

This research investigates the usefulness of two major types of interactional feedback (elicitation and reformulation) in dyadic interaction. The focus is on the different ways in which each feedback type is provided and their relationship with learner repair. The participants were 42 adult intermediate English as a second language learners and…

The authors offer research studies and other documented evidence that teaching grammar without a meaningful context does not improve student writing, largely because that approach does not address the root causes of errors. Several resources that support this position and offer more productive strategies are summarized, including the authors'…

This proceedings contains papers presented at the sixth annual conference of the Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar. Papers in the proceedings are: "The Politics of Grammar" (Sabah A. Salih); "(Still) Trying to Find an Answer to the Problem of 'Error' in Writing" (William McCleary); "Grammar and Literacy:…

Drawing from an overview of cloze research, this paper sets forth the thesis that the validity of the cloze technique and its usefulness as a measuring device have been clearly established, but its usefulness as a teaching device has not been so determined. Salient points of research are summarized as follows: (1) if rates of developing…

This paper begins with a discussion of the meaning and importance of error analysis in language teaching and learning. The practical implications of what error analysis is for the classroom teacher are discussed, along with several possible systems for classifying learner errors. The need for the language teacher to establish certain priorities in…

The uses of error analysis in teaching English as a second language are discussed. Error analysis can pinpoint areas of difficulty for an individual or an entire class. Materials and methods to use in error analysis are detailed, and use of a card file to catalog errors is suggested. (CHK)

Sets forth a "deconstructionalist" approach to writing evaluation that emphasizes the attitude of error analysis. (FL)

Examines the implications of the ACTFL Provisional Proficiency Guidelines for the writing curriculum. Argues that the functions identified in the guidelines should be practices in writing as well as in speech. Discusses error correction techniques and presents examples of writing assignments in Russian that elicit advanced-level functions. (SED)

Reviews the results of research in language acquisition, interactional analysis, pragmatics, repair, error, and social and affective factors. Extracts four language teaching principles relating to acquisition activities in the classroom, the importance of affective factors, the communicative capacity of learners, and the nature and treatment of…