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Teaching proofreading skills as a meansof reducing composition errorsJessie Carduner aa Kent State University, USAPublished online: 25 Oct 2007.

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COMPOSITION ERRORS

Teaching proofreading skills as a means

of reducing composition errors

Jessie Carduner*Kent State University, USA

Foreign language teachers have long been frustrated by learners’ written errors. Traditional

approaches to the problem—grammar instruction and error feedback—when used alone are not

effective. Explicit instruction in proofreading provides a missing link. When instruction in

proofreading is embedded in grammar instruction and when learners use error feedback to detect,

diagnose and correct errors, the writing–grammar connection becomes more obvious and learners

can take better control of their own accuracy. This article presents instructional methods for

teaching proofreading skills to fifth-semester college-level students of Spanish, enrolled in a

grammar and composition course, but they can be adapted to other languages and levels. It includes

strategies for developing general proofreading skills as well as strategies specifically tailored to the

needs of second language learners.

Introduction

Foreign language composition instructors have long been frustrated by learners’

errors. Learners often accurately and consistently apply a rule to a grammar exercise

but then fail to apply the same rule in open-ended writing assignments. Grammar

instruction and error correction, two common approaches to reducing errors, do not

guarantee that the grammar-writing connection will be made, as one learner explains:

‘I can read grammar books, but it doesn’t connect to what I’m doing when I write’

(Murie, 1997, p. 64). Another of Murie’s students observes how information on the

blackboard is clear, but that it is ‘another thing altogether to find the error in one’s

writing’ (p. 64). Castro et al. (1988) suggest that the primary reason for this

disconnect is that grammar drills promote conscious linguistic analysis, whereas

writing is focused on communication. Explicit instruction in the skill of proofreading,

to be done in the final stages of the writing process, may provide the missing link

*Modern and Classical Language Studies, Kent State University, 109 Sattefield Hall, Kent, Ohio

44221, USA. Email: jcardune@kent.edu

Language Learning JournalVol. 35, No. 2, December 2007, pp. 283–295

ISSN 0957-1736 (print)/ISSN 1753-2167 (online)/07/020283-13

ª 2007 Association for Language Learning

DOI: 10.1080/09571730701317655

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between grammar and writing accuracy. It is proposed here as a complement to, not a

substitute for, traditional grammar instruction and error feedback.

The approach to be presented shortly is used in a fifth-semester Spanish grammar

and composition course in an American public university. Students at this level have

been exposed to all of the Spanish verb tenses and moods, the Spanish pronoun

system and concepts such as noun-modifier agreement. They have had some practice

in creating compound and complex sentences using conjunctions and relative

pronouns. They are able to produce paragraph-length discourse, but make frequent

errors in spelling, agreement, tenses and pronoun usage. Their syntax is simple and

few connector words are used. Word choice is repetitive and carries little semantic

load. Class size ranges from 15 to 22 students. Most are native speakers of English,

but occasionally heritage speakers enrol. The strategies presented in this article can be

adapted to other languages and levels, but they assume an intermediate level of

proficiency as just described.

The nature of proofreading

The terms proofreading, editing, and revision are used inconsistently. Harris (1987, p.

465) restricts proofreading to the final phase of the writing process, saying that it is used

for the ‘explicit purpose of eliminating minor errors from the manuscript’. She

contrasts this with revising and editing which are ‘rewriting functions that occur

throughout the composing process’. Smith and Sutton (1994) take a similar position,

indicating that ‘proofreading’ involves verifying accuracy in the areas of sentence

structure, grammar, punctuation, spelling and usage, capitalization, and numbers,

whereas ‘editing’ involves evaluating the style and format of a document to make sure

that it is clear, concise, coherent, concrete, considerate and complete. Ferris (1995b)

and Shih (1998), by contrast, use the term editing to refer to the activities Harris (1987)

and Smith and Sutton (1994) designate as proofreading and revision to describe the act

of making stylistic and content changes. In this article, ‘proofreading’ and ‘editing’ will

be used interchangeably to describe what generally occurs in the final stages of the

writing process during which the writer finds and corrects ‘grammatical, lexical, and

mechanical errors before submitting (or ‘publishing’) a final written product’ (Ferris,

1995b, p. 18). ‘Revision’, by contrast, will refer to the preceding stages in which the

writer modifies content, checks for cohesion and coherence, and is concerned with the

readability of the document. However, since writing is a recursive, non-linear process,

incidental editing may occur at earlier stages and last-minute revisions may occur at

later stages as students notice things they want to change.

Reading and proofreading are distinct activities. The former is an active process

during which readers look at just enough text to anticipate and make predictions

(Harris, 1987). Readers actively seek to understand a text, filling in missing

information, drawing inferences and predicting meaning (Bartlett, 1982). Proof-

reading, by contrast, requires a deliberate effort to counter usual reading strategies,

looking at each word and punctuation mark and noting not only what is present in the

text, but also what may be absent (Harris, 1987, p. 464). Students need to be made

aware of this distinction.

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There are three principal steps to correcting an error in written text: detection,

diagnosis and alteration (Shih, 1998). Of these, detection seems to be the most difficult.

Even highly literate, experienced writers and editors have trouble detecting errors in

text (West, 1983; Harris, 1987). Plumb et al. (1994), Ferris and Roberts (2001) and

Lee (1997) found that participants in their respective studies were able to correct more

errors when the location of the error was somehow signalled than when it was not.

Locating one’s own mistakes may be especially difficult (Hull, 1987; Rosen, 1987;

Ferris, 1995b). In a still often-cited article, Shaughnessy (1977) proposed that writers

fail to detect their own errors because they see what they meant to write rather than

what they have actually written, i.e. they read their text instead of proofreading it.

Hull (1987) found that college students working in their native language use three

macro-strategies to perform a correction: consulting, intuiting, and comprehending.

(Hull uses the term ‘correction’ inclusively to include detection, diagnosis and

alteration.) Consulting involves drawing on one’s knowledge of the conventions of a

language; intuiting involves relying on how a text sounds; and comprehending

involves detecting something wrong with the meaning of the text. Native speakers

typically use consulting to correct violations of conventions such as spelling,

punctuation and usage. Most consulting errors occur within a single constituent.

Intuiting is often used to correct syntax errors. These typically occur within a

sentence or clause rather than within a constituent. Errors fixed by comprehending

are often ‘supersentential’ (p. 12). To correct these, the writer must recognize that

another reader ‘without ‘privileged knowledge’ would not understand the text or

would misinterpret it’ (p. 12). Referential ambiguity is one type of error that might be

fixed by the comprehending strategy.

Assumptions and guiding principles

Most of the literature cited above concerns first language writers. For second language

writers, producing the ‘error-free copy’ or ‘achieving 100 per cent accuracy’ as

prescribed by Smith and Sutton (1994, p. 3) is neither desirable nor practical (Ferris,

1995b). Over-emphasis on accuracy can stifle learners’ creativity (Castro et al., 1988),

lead to premature editing and interfere with their ability to develop meaning through

writing (Rosen, 1987; Bosher, 1990). Further, since native speakers rarely achieve

perfect accuracy (Cogie et al., 1999), it is unreasonable to expect this of non-native

speakers. There must be balanced attention to content, meaning and accuracy, and

students must know when in the writing process to pay attention to each.

Second language writers have far more to contend with than simple errors in

convention, punctuation and spelling. Native speakers engage in proofreading primarily

to detect performance-based errors, that is, ‘accidental slips of the pen’ or errors that are

due to the physical or conceptual demands of writing (Bosher, 1990, p. 92). Second

language learners, by contrast, commit both performance-based and competence-based

errors (i.e. errors that reflect the student’s current interlanguage). Competence-based

errors are far harder to detect and correct. Learners may not realize that they have used

an incorrect form since their grasp of the target language is incomplete. Their

interlanguage may contain incorrect fossilized forms and interference errors.

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Cogie et al. (1999) caution against overwhelming learners by requiring them to fix

all errors. Instruction in proofreading should focus learners’ attention on more

serious errors, such as: ones that interfere with meaning, sometimes called global

errors (Ferris, 1995b; Cogie et al., 1999); those that distract or annoy the reader;

those that are easily self-correctable by using the monitor such as bound morphology

or word endings (Castro et al., 1988); and those that are most frequent (Ferris,

1995b; Cogie et al., 1999). Learners will vary greatly in the quantity and type of errors

they commit, so individualized assistance is recommended (Ferris, 1995b). Error logs

can be used to help learners track the type and frequency of their errors, guiding them

in what to look for in future essays.

With regard to the three macro-strategies outlined by Hull (1987), second language

learners may need to rely more on consulting strategies than do native speakers. Since

they lack the ‘ear to hear their own errors’ (Cogie et al., 1999, p. 6), learners will need

to use conscious rules more often to check their accuracy. Since there are far too many

rules to memorize or articulate, learners will need to know how to look up structures

and vocabulary in a variety of language reference tools. To do so requires well-

developed metalinguistic skills. Since there is general consensus that learners often

lack these skills (Frodesen, 1991; Lee, 1997; Bishop, 1998; Ferris & Roberts, 2001;

Carduner, 2003), instruction in proofreading must include strategies for, and practice

in, developing metalinguistic abilities. Learners may equally struggle with compre-

hending strategies, as demands on their short-term memory (Harris, 1987; Madraso,

1993) may restrict their ability to work across clause and sentence boundaries.

The ultimate goal of instruction in proofreading is to help learners become

independent editors. Many students may expect instructors to edit for them (Ferris &

Roberts, 2001) or they may be accustomed to ‘get[ing] away with first draft copy’

(Bartlett, 1982, p. 345). Requiring multiple drafts that show improvement and setting

aside classroom time for students to edit their own papers during the initial lessons on

proofreading encourages them to be responsible for their own accuracy while

providing them with opportunities to receive peer and instructor support. Proof-

reading tasks should be assigned after students have submitted an initial and a revised

draft so that they become aware of the proper point in the writing process at which to

edit their papers. As students become more proficient editors, instructors can require

that progressively more editing be completed out of class.

Instructional techniques

Instruction in proofreading should focus on both universal skills and those unique to

the second language writing experience. Universal skills include understanding the

reading/proofreading distinction; knowing how to modify the normal reading

process; knowing at what stage proofreading should occur; knowing the purpose of

proofreading; and being familiar with general strategies such as reducing distractions,

distancing oneself from the text and using writers’ reference tools. Second language

proofreading strategies include knowing how to work around limited proficiency;

knowing one’s skills, limitations and patterns of error; and knowing how to use

writers’ reference tools specifically designed for second language learners.

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The lessons described below follow a classroom assessment model (Angelo, 1991;

Angelo & Cross, 1993) in which information about students’ progress is continuously

gathered. Students’ performance on writing and proofreading tasks and their answers

to short surveys about their progress provide feedback to the instructor, who in turn

should close the ‘feedback loop’ by communicating results to students, making

instructional adjustments and reassessing (Angelo & Cross, 1993, p. 6). While each

instance of the proofreading lessons varies slightly from one semester to the next as

determined by student need, the general cycle remains the same. A pre-assessment is

administered to assess students’ current knowledge; a topic is introduced, presented

and practised, performance is evaluated, a post-assessment is administered; and the

instructor reviews for the entire class, if needed, or provides additional instruction to

individual students based on student feedback and performance.

Developing universal skills and strategies

Instructors might introduce proofreading with an inventory of students’ prior

knowledge and proofreading habits. The inventory in Figure 1, adapted from Powerful

proofreading skills (Smith & Sutton, 1994, p. 13) with additional questions added

specific to second language learning, can assist instructors in gauging students’ prior

knowledge while also serving as an advance organizer since it mentions a good

majority of tips and strategies that appear in the literature on proofreading. Although

not included here, additional questions might address proofreading on screen versus

Figure 1. Proofreading strategies inventory

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working with printed copy, peer editing, tutoring, and so forth, depending upon

available resources and services.

Results over several semesters indicate that roughly half of the students in a given

class at the university where these proofreading strategies are taught typically report

always doing the following: proofreading when most alert, reducing distractions,

distancing themselves from the paper for a period of time, taking frequent breaks, and

working in a comfortable setting. Approximately 50% report occasionally using these

strategies. Over several semesters, a majority of students report occasionally verifying

deadlines, while only a few report always verifying them, suggesting that time

management is a topic to be addressed in proofreading lessons. Response patterns

indicate that most learners feel they have received lots of instruction about

proofreading in English and little to none about proofreading in Spanish. Students

repeatedly mention that spelling, accents, verbs, and agreement give them the most

trouble when proofreading in Spanish. Assessment results suggest that a brief review of

general proofreading strategies would be useful followed by more detailed instruction

on how to proofread for the topics mentioned by students as being most difficult.

Instructors should give a brief presentation on the effects of errors on the reader in

order to emphasize the importance of proofreading. Ferris (1995b) suggests using

examples from student essays and discussing how these errors impede understanding.

Learners need to be aware that abundant errors may annoy the reader or give the

instructor the impression that a paper was hastily prepared. This, in turn, may lead to

a lower grade, since society equates correctness with writing ability (Rosen, 1987).

Once students have a general understanding of the value of proofreading and are

familiar with some basic techniques, they will be ready to use more language-specific

and situation-specific strategies.

Developing skills specific to the needs of second language writers

Three types of knowledge, linguistic, metalinguistic and metacognitive, are required

for second language learners to be effective proofreaders. Linguistic knowledge refers

to unconscious, automated knowledge of the code; metalinguistic knowledge refers to

learners’ ability to talk about and analyze language and its rules; and metacognition

(Oxford, 1990) involves being able to self-monitor, self-evaluate, pay attention,

organize, and connect new knowledge to prior knowledge, among other skills. The

three areas should be developed simultaneously and, as grammatical and lexical

topics are introduced, instructors should connect these to the act of proofreading.

As noted above, to compose, revise and proofread effectively, learners need access

to more grammatical knowledge, conscious or otherwise, than may be part of their

current competence. Therefore, an overview of metalinguistic terminology and

writers’ reference tools at the start of the semester is useful. Students should become

familiar with the table of contents and index to their text and be provided with a

bilingual glossary of grammatical terms and examples. The purpose of the overview is

to make students aware of the availability of grammatical and lexical information.

They should not be expected to master all of the terminology at once, but should

gradually become more accustomed to using reference resources to answer their

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language questions. Figure 2 shows an abbreviated pre-assessment tool and exercise

for introducing metalinguistic terminology and orientating students to their text.

Data from the assessment in Figure 2 over several semesters indicate that most

students feel very familiar with basic grammar terminology but only somewhat or not

at all familiar with more advanced terminology. Terms with which students most

frequently report being unfamiliar include adverbial clause, antecedent, auxiliary

verb, complement, copulative verb, inflection, intransitive, and non-restrictive

modifier. Some of these terms need to be introduced quite early. For instance,

learners will have difficulty selecting the correct Spanish equivalent for a given

English verb if they do not understand the concept of transitivity, whereas the term

non-restrictive modifier may not need to be introduced until relative pronouns are

formally presented. While students report being very familiar with bilingual

dictionaries, they are less familiar with Spanish monolingual dictionaries, thesauri

and Spanish spelling and grammar checkers. Accumulated pre-assessments suggest

that students are not proficient at using a reference grammar or their text’s index, and

research indicates that learners, while familiar with them, are often not very

competent bilingual dictionary users (see Bishop, 1998; Carduner, 2003). These

skills will need to be reinforced as learners are taught more about proofreading and

writing. The lesson on noun-modifier agreement (Figure 3) shows how dictionary

skills, text-consulting and proofreading skills can be re-entered when a new grammar

topic is introduced. If there are computers available for classroom use, the plan may

be adapted to include instruction in using a grammar and spell checker.

The noun-modifier pre-assessment gauges individual learner’s knowledge about

the terminology associated with nouns and modifiers and it evaluates their ability to

correct agreement errors depending upon the distance between the noun and

modifier, the type of adjective used, and noun endings. The traditional textbook

exercises in Part II are designed to help learners develop linguistic skills. The more

learners automate, the more they will be able to intuit or use readily available

consulting rules. The exercises in Part III are designed to give learners practice in

using metalinguistic knowledge to look up needed rules for applying and verifying the

accuracy of agreement rules. Part IV gives students practice in proofreading for

agreement on a text written by someone other than themselves. Part V gives students

practice in editing for noun-modifier agreement on their own essays. The assessment

in Part VI provides the instructor with formative data on an individual student’s

progress and advances learners’ metacognitive knowledge about their own under-

standing of agreement rules.

On the pre-assessments, students typically are able to identify and correct

descriptive adjectives for agreement, but they frequently overlook numeric,

quantitative, demonstrative and possessive adjectives. Adjectives are more readily

corrected when they are adjacent to the noun they modify. The most frequent

comments on post-assessments relate to the need to memorize or look up the gender of

nouns and that there are many more rules than students had previously realized.

Students frequently acknowledge that they need to spend more time and care in

proofreading for noun-adjective agreement after the lessons. Thus, proofreading

instruction is effective in raising students’ awareness. After the lessons, students are

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Figure 2. General metalinguistic skills

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Figure 3. Noun-modifier agreement

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generally able to correct most agreement errors when these are identified for them and

when the noun and modifier are contiguous, but learners continue to have difficulty

correcting agreement errors across sentence boundaries, and demonstrative adjectives

and past participles continue to be problematic. Lessons similar to the ones proposed

for nouns and their modifiers may be created for other grammatical and lexical topics.

As just shown, proofreading skills can be incorporated into grammar lessons. Error

feedback and proofreading can likewise be integrated. Error feedback seems to be

most effective when it involves problem solving (Castro et al., 1988) rather than overt

correction (Lee, 1997) and when it requires that students produce a modified text

(Ferris, 1995a) rather than merely using the feedback to improve writing in future

assignments. Error feedback should be given only after the learner has self-edited.

Figure 4 shows a sample error feedback system that is keyed to the text, Aprendizaje

(Nance & Rivera, 2003). Instructors can create a feedback key for whatever texts they

are using. Students would not see the ‘Instructor only’ column, just the error code

and the place to find information about fixing each type of error. The problem-solving

task involves looking up appropriate rules for diagnosing and altering the faulty text.

It is most effective when papers are submitted and graded electronically, so that error

types are easily recognized by the colour of the text highlighting. However, coloured

markers can be used to mark paper copy, as long as the colour-coding remains

consistent.

Figure 5 is an example of a graded paragraph in which error types are coded using a

full marking system. Figures 6 and 7 are examples using same coding scheme, with

minimal marking to be used with more proficient proofreaders who are better at

detecting errors. Each type of marking gives progressively less information about the

location and type of error. The coding system can be used to tally the number of errors

of each type (error log) to help instructors and students monitor their progress.

Figure 5 includes one such error log. The log in this example indicates that the student

is having the most difficulty with spelling and accent marks and distinguishing between

demonstrative pronouns and demonstrative adjectives. The instructor might provide

the student with extra handouts and practice on these topics or reserve time to talk

with the student to find out why she is making these types of errors.

Most students’ compositions improve substantially in content and form when the

techniques presented above are used systematically to introduce new grammar topics.

However, students continue to need help in error detection, although they seem to

become more adept at detecting spelling, agreement and lexical errors on their own as

the semester progresses. In end-of-the-semester assessments, regarding their overall

learning experience students frequently comment that the most important things that

they learned were how to use a dictionary and their texts better, and how to

proofread. Many state that they better understand the writing process. Some students

have even noted that they can use what they have learned in Spanish class to help

them write in English. It is important to note that students with lower proficiency

levels improve but do not necessarily reach the level of accuracy needed to be

successful in subsequent courses. Further, students who do not have good reading or

writing skills in their native language or who have weaker than customary meta-

linguistic or metacognitive abilities do not always do well in the class. These students

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Figure 4. Error coding key

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often need additional interventions such as tutoring or guidance from a writing

centre. Overall, however, explicit instruction in proofreading does seem to help

students make the connection between grammar and writing and to give them more

autonomy in monitoring their own accuracy.

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Figure 6. Slight marking

Figure 5. Full marking

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