error analysis in writing

7/28/2019 Error Analysis in Writing

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Error Analysis in Writing

Initial error marking

Error pattern analysis starts with the teacher or editor identifying errors.

1. If at all possible, make a photocopy of the piece of writing. You need to havea copy you can mark up, and it's disconcerting for writers to see all themarkings you'll make as you get started with the analysis.

2. Read through a paragraph or a page without marking anything just to get afeel for the number and range of errors. Depending on the number, decide ifyou can mark all errors in one pass or if you'll need multiple passes.

3. Go through the first paragraph slowly, marking as many errors as you canfind. Ignore stylistic choices but note word choices that are wrong. Ditto withpunctuation.

Checking Error Marking

4. Go back through paragraph 1 looking for additional errors. You will almostcertainly find one or two. If you find more than that, assume that you'll havework in multiple passes to identify all the errors.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for the next paragraph.6. Now that you're sure about how many passes through the text you'll need to

spot all the errors, continue to mark all the errors you can find through at

least two full pages of the text.

Clustering errors into patterns

7. Take quick stock of the kinds of errors that you've found. Cluster errors intogroups--word choice, sentence punctuation (fragments, comma splices, run-ons), sentence structure (sentence appears to start in one direction and endsup somewhere else), agreement, reference, modification (misplaced wordsand phrases), internal punctuation (comma use, dashes, apostrophes),spelling, idiomatic lapses, missing or misused articles.

8. Read through the remaining text to see if you spot new kinds of errors andmark those. Don't mark exhaustively any of the categories you've alreadyidentified.

Ranking errors to edit

Now comes the tricky part--moving from grossly identifying error into settingup a plan to teach students how to edit for those errors. My rule of thumb isto start with the errors that are most confusing or distracting for readers--


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sentence punctuation, subject-verb agreement, and garbled sentencestructure. Especially with native speakers who are inexperienced or basicwriters, these are most likely to be the errors that mark them as ineffectivewriters. Native speakers trying to impress readers with a big vocabulary aremost likely to have word-choice and spelling errors, but they may alsomisuse semicolons; of these, the word-choice and sentence-punctuationerrors are the most significant. For non-native speakers, subject-verbagreement, verb tense, and article errors are typically the most noticeableand distracting.

Even though you may have a pet peeve about a particular kind of error, tryto put that aside to focus on the errors that most readers will find disruptiveof communication. Those are the errors to start with.

9. Go back through the paper and rank the errors in terms of theirdisruptiveness. At this point, it's often useful to make lists on a secondsheet of paper or to work with a grid that will help you organize the

errors you spot.

Don't forget to try this step with your sample paper.

Highlighting a particular error

10.Now highlight one particular kind of error. Maybe mark sentence-punctuation errors with yellow highlighter and subject-verb agreementerrors with blue. Don't worry about all the various ways that studentscreate, say, sentence completion problems at this step because you'lldo that later. You're looking for large categories of errors now to try to

assess the kinds of explanations you'll need to start with to helpstudents learn to edit for the errors they make.

Determining patterns of errors

11.Once you've got one or two categories of the most disruptive errorshighlighted, look to see if there are any patterns within these types oferrors. For example, you may notice that the student usescoordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, yet, so)interchangeably with conjunctive adverbs (therefore, then, however,etc.). They aren't interchangeable in formal, edited American English,but explaining the difference to students is fairly easy. One entire sub-category of error might disappear with a two-minute explanation.Similarly, perhaps all the subject-verb agreement errors occur when

the student is trying to avoid "he" or "she" as the subject of thesentence. By trying to avoid an apparently sexist usage, the studentkeeps shifting from "he" to "they," and the verbs don't always reflect asingular or plural subject. Giving the student 20 seconds of adviceabout changing the entire passage to plural forms (just use "they"throughout) may fix the problem.


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Second level ranking of errors

12.If you spot patterns within the categories, note how many differentkinds of errors there are within the category. You may find as many asfive or six sub-categories of error within some of the more inclusive,larger categories like sentence-punctuation errors.

13.Note an example that illustrates each of the sub-categories you thinkyou want to take up with the student.

14.Rank the sub-categories in some order, most likely how you can useone explanation to build up for a second sub-category. For example, ifthe writer uses all connecting words in the same way, you willprobably need to start by explaining the different kinds of connectivesin English sentences. Then you can build--eventually--to yourexplanation of when to use semicolons with certain kinds of connectingwords.

Finally! Working with the student

Finally, you get to move from error pattern analysisper se into teachingstrategies for editing. Again, some simple rules of thumb will get you startedwith this process, but you'll want to shape your entire approach on thestudent's individual situation.

Evaluate the student's ability to recognize the most disruptive error

15.Make sure you have an example of the most disruptive error and of

the first sub-category from which you want to build your explanations.Ask the student to read the sentence to see if he can spot anyproblem. (You'll want to do a bit of diagnosing at this stage to find outwhat the student knows and how negative his attitudes are towardediting.) Sometimes, students, especially native speakers, are morelikely to "hear" a problem than see it, so be sure to have thesestudents read sentences aloud.

a. If the student can tell you how to fix the problem, have him dothat and then go to the next example of the same sub-categoryof error. If the student can correctly identify and edit thisexample and one more, the problem is most likely to be one of

monitoring for the error, not of misunderstanding thegrammatical and conventional uses of written English. Ask thestudent how he ordinarily proofreads and suggest that he makea separate proofreading pass looking for this type of error.

b. Even if the student can correctly identify the first sub-categoryof error, don't assume that all the sub-categories will be equally

obvious to the student. Go through at least one example for


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every sub-category of the kind of error before you move on tothe next kind of error.

Start with basic explanations and move to error correction

2.If the student can't identify the problem, mis-identifies some otherproblem in the sentence as the major problem, or just looks blank,you'll need to start with some basic explanations and work your waytoward more complexity over time.

3. After you've explained the problem, show the student how to edit tocorrect the first sentence. Ask the student to identify the error and editthe second example of the same type of error. (If the student stillcan't fix the error, try another variation of your explanation and workwith more examples.) As soon as the student can fix two or threeerrors in a row, have her fix one more with you watching. Then askher to fix the remaining sentences with the same type of error in the

two-page sample you marked. If the student can do those withoutyour intervention, have the student look for additional errors of thesame type in the next page or so of the text.

4. When the student is confident of both finding and fixing errors of thissub-type, move to the next sub-type.

Important Caveat

As you can imagine, for students with multiple, serious errors, thisapproach is time-consuming and can feel extremely tedious. But ourgoal is to help writers do this editing on their own, not to do it forthem, and this approach is just about the only way to help them learnto edit the common errors they make in their own writing. Mostclassroom explanations of grammar and editing fail to teach much, ifanything, because students don't see those errors in their ownsentences.

Teaching Tips

Limit what you try to cover in one session. Explaining one bigcategory is plenty to cover in a session. Or if you are workingwith a student who has four sub-types of sentence-punctuationerrors, you might be able to cover two, but probably not morethan that. Make sure he understands that working through allthe categories could take several weeks.


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Keep checking on what the student understands and can do. Askthe student to explain the concept back to you in her ownwords. Ask the student to write a new sentence using theconcept correctly. Don't just assume that she has understoodeverything you've said, because she may be pattern-matchingon the wrong pattern as she edits sentences. Although studentswill often balk at it, work hard to get them to explain to you indetail what they're thinking as they're editing after they seem tohave the concept under control.

Only if a student needs more practice after you've gone throughall the examples of a type of error in his paper should you turnto the handouts or textbooks for exercises when you're doingthis type of teaching. Students are often much more proficientat spotting errors in texts they haven't written and will missexactly the same problem in their own papers time and again.

From:http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/teaching/error/printformat.cfm?printformat=yes
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Possible Categories for Extended Error Pattern Analysis in Writing

Syntax

Sentence completeness

Basic word order (including direct and indirect questions)

Basic modification (clauses, phrases, words)

Advanced sentences (parallel structure, variety, etc.)

Punctuation

Terminal

Basic sentence-internal punctuation (between coordinate clauses, in series, with sentence openers, with

sentence interrupters)

Basic quotation

Apostrophes

Academic quotation

Grammar

Regular standard inflections

Basic agreement (subject-verb and pronoun)

Basic tense formations

Irregular verbs

Tense consistency

Special usage (case with pronouns, agreement in unusual contexts, etc.)

Spelling

Key sound-letter correspondences (including troublesome vowels)

Basic spelling patterns (doubled consonants, silent e, etc.)

Vocabulary

Confused connotation (the thesaurus complex)

Word-class shifts (courage/courageous, e.g.)

Roots, prefixes, suffixes

Idioms

Academic terms (abstract or technical vocabulary, Latin/Greek terms)

Precision

(Adapted from Errors and Expectations)

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