Integrate ELLWC Services into Your Curriculum
Multilingual (ESL) students can improve linguistic accuracy and clarity of their writing if they realize the importance of editing and receive training in self-editing strategies. You can encourage students to embrace the need for accuracy and editing by including error analysis, error logs, and in-class peer- and self-editing workshops into your curriculum.
Error Analysis
Error analysis enables students to recognize individual errors and their frequencies. Together, consultants and students will identify all errors in a paper, their pervasive patterns and determine which error patterns are the most problematic and should be addressed first.
Download an Error Analysis Form that you can assign to students.
Error Log
Students can benefit from the consistent use of error logs, in which they track and measure their progress. Using error logs, consultants can help students track the same error types for each paper they write. Error logs direct students to think in terms of error frequency ratios (total numbers of errors divided by total numbers of words) rather than simple error counts. Looking at error log counts, students should be able to see error patterns either decrease or increase regardless of the length of a paper. For example, if there are ten verb-tense errors in a six-hundred-word essay, this number is significant; however, if ten verb-tense errors are made in a two-thousand-word paper, that may be less so.
Download an Error Log Form that you can assign to students.
Sample Assignments
Consider including assignments in your syllabus that can encourage multilingual (ESL) students to improve overall accuracy and clarity. These assignments can be used as extra credit assignments for ESL students in mixed groups of students (native and non-native speakers of English). To ensure fairness, you may want to have an extra credit option for native speakers.
Analysis of Grammar/Vocabulary Errors: Using Error Analysis
For Instructors
- To complete this assignment, ask your students to use a draft of the first paper before it is edited so that they can gain a sense of their strengths and weaknesses in writing at the beginning of the semester.
- Encourage your students to visit the ELLWC. On their own, multilingual (ESL) students cannot recognize language/vocabulary errors coming from their native languages and/or insufficient knowledge of grammar. Because these errors are invisible, ELLWC consultants can help students identify them and complete the Error Analysis form. If students choose to correct the identified errors, they should schedule an additional one or more appointments depending on the number and gravity of errors. Consultants will explain grammar rules for the identified errors and help students correct them.
- Students can download the Error Analysis form from the ELLWC website. Also hard copies are available in all ELLWC locations.
For Students
Accuracy and clarity matter in this class because they are important in the real world. Language errors are distracting because they can interfere with the comprehensibility of your ideas and may frustrate some readers and even stop them from reading. The goal of this assignment is to help you identify all language errors in your draft and determine the most pervasive error patterns so you can learn to correct them.
Work with your ELLWC consultant to complete this assignment!
You will identify all grammar and vocabulary errors in your draft of (name the first paper for the course) before turning it in. You will complete the Error Analysis form. This form will help you determine your most frequent error patterns. You can download the Error Analysis form from the ELLWC website. Also hard copies are available in all ELLWC locations.
Turn in the completed Error Analysis form together with your paper.
The assignment will be graded as complete or incomplete. “Complete” is assigned when the assignment complies with the requirements stated in the guidelines. “Incomplete” is assigned when it partially complies with the requirements stated in the guidelines, e.g., the most problematic errors are not identified.
Tracking Pervasive Error Patterns: Using Error Logs
For Instructors
- The assignment “Tracking Pervasive Error Patterns” is based on the assignment “Analysis of Grammar/Vocabulary Errors.”
- To complete this assignment, ask students to use drafts of two or three papers to track the same error types they previously found by completing the Error Analysis form.
- Encourage your students to visit the ELLWC. ELLWC consultants can help them identify all error patterns for each paper indicated in their Error Analysis forms. Consultants can also explain grammar rules so that students can correct them.
- Students can download the Error Log form from the ELLWC website. Also hard copies are available in all ELLWC locations.
For Students
Although the development of accuracy and clarity is a long process, you can make observable improvements by regularly working on the major error patterns shown in your Error Analysis form. The goal of this assignment is to help you measure progress in overall accuracy by tracking the relative frequency of the same error types as you move from one paper to the next.
Work with your ELLWC consultant to complete this assignment!
In (name a paper), you will locate the error patterns indicated in your Error Analysis form. You will total the frequency ratios (total numbers of errors divided by total numbers of words) for each error pattern and enter them in the Error Log form. Do the same for (name a paper).
You can download the Error Log form from the ELLWC website. Also hard copies are available in all ELLWC locations.
Turn in your Error Log with each paper
The assignment will be graded as complete or incomplete. “Complete” is assigned when the assignments comply with the requirements stated in the guidelines. “Incomplete” is assigned when they partially comply with the requirements stated in the guidelines, e.g., the Error Log form is incomplete.
In-Class Peer- and Self-Editing Workshops
In-Class Peer- and Self-Editing Workshops are 20-25 minute ELLWC consultant-led sessions focusing on the most frequent grammar errors. During the session, two consultants will train students to edit grammar issues in their papers by engaging them in a brief interactive presentation, editing exercises, and application activities. These sessions are most beneficial when included in peer-review sessions.
Editing Verb-Tense Errors
This workshop is designed for students to review the differences in the use of the simple present, simple past, and present perfect tenses. Students will engage in peer-editing and self-editing activities aimed at identifying and correcting verb-tense errors in their drafts.
Editing Sentence-Structure Errors
This workshop focuses on correcting comma splices and run-ons. Students will learn how to identify and correct these errors in their peers’ drafts and their own drafts.
Editing Errors with Use of Articles
This workshop reviews the common applications of articles. Students will learn how to apply a flowchart visualizing article use to particular contexts. Students will practice peer- and self-editing skills by finding and correcting errors with articles in peers’ drafts and their own drafts.
Editing Errors with Connecting Words
This workshop reviews types of connectors and their functions. Students will learn to identify and correct errors for two types of connecting words: coordinating conjunctions and transition words/phrases in their peers’ drafts and their own drafts.
Editing Subject-Verb Agreement Errors
This workshop engages students in reviewing rules for subject-verb agreement and applying them for correcting subject-verb agreement errors in their peers’ drafts and their own drafts.
Editing Verb-Form Errors
This workshop focuses on seven problems students commonly encounter with verb forms. Students will review rules for form forms and practice applying them for correcting verb-form errors in their peers’ drafts and their own drafts.
Please schedule an In-Class Peer- and Self-Editing workshop at least two weeks in advance. Fulfillment of your request will depend on consultant availability.