A Student Corpus Analysis: Implications For Teaching Writing And Evaluating

A STUDENT CORPUS ANALYSIS: IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING WRITING AND EVALUATING LANGUAGE TEXTBOOKS Author: Ammar ElMerhbi Dar Jana Int'l School

Note: This is the school version of the study. A more comprehensive and thorough study paper with complete references will be published soon for the general practitioners and researchers.

Abstract

This paper is a result of the analysis of grade 9 ESL/EFLstudent corpus of writing product. The analysis shows that students lack essential linguistic and writing skills-grammatical and lexical- such as phrasal verbs, collocations, and lexis. It is therefore strongly recommended to alter language teaching instructions and re-evaluate writing and grammar textbooks to suit the needs of the students. It is also equally recommended that teaching should be datainformed (life-long learning) rather than data-driven (training for standardized test, such as test-taking strategies and tactics).

Introduction

The reason for this computational study is the continuous errors that students commit in their written communication and the unnatural linguistic flow resulting from errors in syntactic parsing and word choice. The lack of cohesion and the improper use of cohesive devices in student writing are also erroneous patterns. Questions such as -What linguistic and writing skills do students lack in order to include in language teaching instructions? Do(es) the language textbook(s) target those skills that students lack or need in order to survive academic writing?- were the impetus to conduct this study.

WHAT IS A CORPUS? A corpus ( plural corpora) is an annotated body of text, written or spoken (transcribed) of which linguists and researchers study certain linguistic patterns, whether words, phrases or collocations, to deduce a rule in language. Many dictionaries are built on linguistic corpora such as Collins Cobuild Dictionary, which is based on a 100 million word corpus between written and spoken.

WHAT IS STUDENT CORPUS?

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Student corpus is an annotated body of text that is based on student written or spoken product. Students' writings are collected in one document and annotated ( If the writings are hand-written then they should be typed into a word processor to analyze). The reason for such a corpus is to analyze students' errors and look for patterns of errors to inform teaching and enhance instruction to target those frequent errors.

CONCORDANCE It is now possible to analyze a corpus in hours or days rather in weeks or years due to technological advances in computational linguistics. Concordance is a software that looks for patterns in a corpus and lists them for the researcher to easily locate. It also looks for frequencies of words. The concordance works on the idea of KWIC ( key word in context) and can also be informed to look for collocations, pronouns, etc.. This only works when the corpus is annotated for the concordance to correctly seek the patterns. This usually takes a lot of time. The researcher can also compare a certain corpus with another to look for matches. For instance, comparing words in student corpus to match with SAT word List or Academic Word List ( in the current study). Figure 1 below is a snapshot of a concordance based on this student corpus.

Figure 1

What the researcher looks for are patterns of a linguistic input. In the case of student corpus, the researcher looks for patterns of linguistic and writing errors in order to analyze. Concordances can be also used in classrooms for students to analyze language. This is an innovative method of teaching grammar, writing, and lexis but that is another story and beyond the scope of this report. For more on corpus linguistics and concordance visit my blog http://call4teachers.blogspot.com |Page 2

THE STUDY

Students' writing products were collected and typed into a word processor. The result was a student corpus of 1503 words and 10416 tokens which are the repeated words in the corpus( e.g. and is a word that is repeated 297 time so the token number is 297 and the word number is 1). The sample writing products consisted of 20 girls and 20 boys argumentative writing to ensure gender equality since writing differs between males and females. The student corpus was set up and annotated for conjunctions, connectives, phrases….. The corpus was loaded onto concordance software and analyzed for pattern in writing and linguistic errors. To know what exactly to look for in student corpus, the author listed features of successful academic writing that demonstrate a command of standard written English, and these include           

Phrasing Effective sentence structure Spelling Punctuation Word choice, demonstrating facility with a range of vocabulary appropriate to the topic Lexical precision and careful use of vocabulary Careful and purposeful use of text "maps" and "signposts", such as discourse and metadiscourse markers (e.g. First this essay discuss xxx and yyy then presents solutions to the zzz problem). A guard stance in presenting argumentation and results (e.g. employment of frequent hedges such as modal verbs, adverbs of frequency, or linking verbs) Rightful use of verb-preposition( verbal phrase), verb-noun, adjective-noun, and adjective- adverb collocations Rightful use of conjunctions and connectives and avoiding overuse Word sophistication, including word lengths

Moreover, the student corpus was compared to AWL (Academic word list) and the 5000 SAT word list to know whether students are using appropriate vocabulary in their writing and if so whether they are using them purposefully and properly.

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Result and Analysis

WORD LENGTHS AND FREQUENCIES Word lengths in writing show the level of sophistication of students' word-level knowledge. Figure 2 below displays a graph of word lengths and their frequencies in the student texts.

Figure 2 The horizontal axis in the graph above shows the number of letters of a word. The vertical axis shows the number of words in the student corpus. As one can notice, the highest frequency of words are those of the three-letter, four-letter, and two-letter words having 22.92%, 21.27%, and 18.37% respectively of the number of words in the whole corpus. These words include prepositions ( to, on, in, with..), conjunctions ( and, but, or), and linking and auxiliary verbs ( is, will). It is equally clear the drop of frequency between the four-letter words (21.27%) and the five-letter words (11.5%). The drop in frequencies continues until the thirteen-letter words (0.11%). The fourteen-letter words (0.01%) and twenty-one letter words (0.02%) are discarded as these were inserted in the corpus to serve as annotations and references. The fact that the word lengths of one, two, three, and four letters make up 66.56% of the whole students' writing shows that students do not utilize grade-appropriate words in their writings. Another observation is the overuse of certain words such as to ( 3.418%), you (3.37%), people (1.123 %) and certain conjunctions such as and (2. 851 %) while other connectives are rarely used. Other

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words are also overused, underused, or misused and which will discussed in more details in later sections. Vocabulary usage and Word Choice As mentioned above, the student's writings were measured against the AWL and SAT WORD List and the following results were observed. AWL (Academic Word List) The reason for comparing the corpus with the AWL is that it lists the words that students should know in high school. The AWL is based also on a corpus of academic writing. The result of the comparison shows that students used 42 words and 52 tokens of the AWL out of 1503 words of their corpus. This is considered a low frequency usage of the AWL in academic writing. The words of the AWL used in student writing are listed below with their frequencies : adapt 2, adjust 1, affect 2, appreciate 1, benefit 1, commit 1, complex 1, contrary 1, convince 1, despite 1, environment 1, exceed 1, found 3, grade 3, guarantee 1, integral 1, issue 2, legal 1, major 1, mature 1, normal 1, option 1, percent 1, perspective 1, policy 1, positive 2, principal 1, principle 2, quote 1, recover 1, rely 1, require 1, schedule 1, seek 1, series 2, specific 1, status 1, strategy 1, stress 1 Not only the frequency of the AWL is low ( one or two occurrences in student writing) but also some were used inappropriately in context. One example is the use of affect where the word effect is appropriate. Another example is the use of the word principal where principle should be used. SAT Word List The corpus was also run against the 5000 SAT WORD List, a list of SAT words that are frequent in SAT tests and academic writing and high school reading texts. The figures show that students used 9 SAT words out of the 5000 word list. The tokens are 133 occurrences of the words but only because the word lying was repeated 107 times. The list of the SAT words used in student writing is presented below with their frequencies. Accomplish 1, benefit 1, control 1, curtail 1, despite 1, difference 1, lying 107, opinion 17, positive 2 Again, most of the words were used inappropriately, It is observed that students commit recurring errors in noun-adjective, and verb-preposition collocations. The word cloud below shows all the words in student writing. The larger the word in the cloud, the more frequent it is used. It is noticed how the words people, lying, lie, and life are overused.

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Collocations Collocations are words that come together as pairs or more. These collocations can be verb-preposition, adjectivenoun, or adverb-adjective. Students should know how to collocate words in their writing in order to avoid ambiguity. A close analysis of students' writing shows a major deficit in their collocations, especially those of the AWL and SAT WORD list. This shows that student do not know how to use the vocabulary they acquired purposefully, precisely and carefully to avoid unnatural writing and ambiguity. Figure 3 below shows an example of students' usage of affect instead of effect and how they collocated erroneously the word positive with affect. It is known that the adjective positive collocates with the noun effect ( result) and not affect ( influence mostly used as a verb).

Figure 3 If one compares this with the Cobuild corpus, the result shows that positive does not collocate with affect but with nouns such as emotions, response, steps, stimulus ( collocating with nouns)…. See figure 4 below for an example.

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Figure 4

Another analysis of the word affect shows that it collocates with pronouns and articles and is used almost always as a verb. See figure 5 below

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Figure 5

Phrases Phrases, especially noun and adjective phrases, are also misused and misplaced in the students' writing. Prepositional phrases also prove again to be misplaced modifying words erroneously. Verb phrases such as those with modal verbs ( may, could, should) are analyzed. It is obvious that students use modal verbs erroneously too. They do not know the difference between using may or can, for example.

IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING, TEXTBOOK EVALUATION, AND SUGGESTED WRITING CURRICULUM

Now that one has read the above analysis, one might say So what? The text analysis teamed with current research review in L2 writing give some insights into L2 writing instruction and inform our teaching. Textbook evaluation is rendered, writing curriculum is suggested, and implications for teaching writing are discussed based on the above text analysis and literature review. |Page 8

First , there should be a clear distinction between L1 and L2 writing on one hand and process- and product-centered writing on the other. Differences between L1 and L2 writing The differences between LI and L2 writing are so extensive that they can be identified in practically all aspects of written text and discourse. According to numerous studies of LI and L2 written discourse and text, distinctions between them extend to: • discourse and rhetorical organization • ideas and content of writing • rhetorical modes (e.g., exposition, narration, and argumentation) • reliance on external knowledge and information • references to sources of knowledge and information • assumptions about the reader's knowledge and expectations (e.g., references to assumed common knowledge and familiarity with certain classical works) • the role of audience in discourse and text production, as well as the appraisal of the expected discourse and text complexity (e.g., reader vs. writer responsible text) • discourse and text cohesion • employment of linguistic and rhetorical features of formal written text (e.g., fewer/less complex sentences, descriptive adjectives, passivization, nominalization, lexical variety, and more conjunctions, conversational amplifiers and emphatics, simple nouns and verbs)

In addition to numerous studies of the L1 and L2 writing product, other studies have identified fundamental and substantial differences between approaches to writing and writing processes in L1 and L2. Moreover, A large number of extensive and detailed studies carried out since 1990 have demonstrated that mere exposure to L2 vocabulary, grammar, discourse, and formal written text is not the most effective means of attaining academic L2 proficiency. Product- vs. Process-centered Writing Since the early 1980s, the predominant method of instruction in the teaching of L2 writing has remained focused on the writing process similar to the pedagogy adopted in L1 writing instruction for native speakers of English. The process-centered instructional methodology for teaching writing focuses on invention, creating ideas, and discovering the purpose of writing. Within the process-centered paradigm for teaching L2 writing, student writing is evaluated on the quality of prewriting, writing, and revision. Because the product of writing is seen as secondary to the writing process, and even inhibitory in the early stages of writing, issues of L2 grammar, lexis, and errors are to be addressed only as needed in the context of writing, and L2 writers with proficiency levels higher than beginning are exposed to text and discourse to learn from them and, thus, acquire L2 grammar and lexis naturally. On the other hand, outside L2 writing and English composition classes, the evaluations of the quality of NNSs' (non-native speakers) L2 writing skills by faculty in the disciplines and general education courses as well as standardized test such as SAT and TWE has continued to focus on the product of writing.

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The skills required for NNS students to succeed in mainstream general education courses, as well as those in the disciplines, have remained largely unchanged despite the shift in the writing instruction methodology. Similarly, the assessment of L2 writing skills by ESL professionals on standardized and institutional placement testing has largely remained focused on the writing product without regard to the writing process. The disparity between the teaching methods adopted in L2 writing instruction and evaluation criteria of the quality of L2 writing has produced outcomes that are damaging and costly for most ESL/EFL students, who are taught brainstorming techniques and invention, prewriting, drafting, and revising skills, whereas their essential linguistic skills, such as academic vocabulary and formal features of grammar and text, are only sparsely and inconsistently addressed. If one scrutinizes the students' writing textbook Language Network, an L1 writing textbook, one notices that its approach is process-centered giving great emphasis on the actual process of freewriting, drafting, redrafting. So how can a language teacher use an L1 process-oriented writing textbook to teach L2 students who would benefit from an L2 product-oriented writing instructions? The result of the analysis and literature review also led to the following four assumptions: Assumption 1: Unlike Learning to Write in an L1, Learning to Write in an L2 First Requires an Attainment of Sufficient L2 Linguistic Proficiency Assumption 2: Writing Pedagogy for NSs with Highly Developed (Native) Language Proficiency, Which NNSs (By Definition) Do Not Have, Is Not Readily Applicable to L2 Writing Instruction Assumption 3: Writing Personal Narratives/Opinions ("Telling" What One Already Knows) Is Not Similar to Producing Academic Writing, Which Requires Obtaining and Transforming Knowledge Assumption 4: Intensive and Consistent Instruction in L2 Vocabulary and Grammar, as Well as Discourse Organization, Is Paramount for Academically Bound NNSs CURRICULUM FOR TEACHING THE LANGUAGE FEATURES OF WRITING ACCURACY, ACADEMIC TEXT, AND PRACTICAL GOALS

If our NNS students are to succeed in competition for grades and attain their educational objectives, the level of accuracy in their L2 writing needs at least attempt to approximate that of NS students of similar academic standing. Research has demonstrated that English-language academic writing is governed by several rigid conventions in its discourse structure and language features. The fundamental principle of the L2 academic writing curriculum should center around acceptable and contextually relevant lexical substitutions within a limited range of lexical and syntactic constructions (i.e., text and sentence chunking and focused instruction in replacement parts for chunk components). TEXTUAL FEATURES OF ACADEMIC WRITING The corpus analysis also led to the belief that employment of syntactic, lexical, and discourse features of text and errors in the uses of these features have an influential effect on the perceived quality of students' text. Although sentence- and phrase-level errors are often seen in relative rather than absolute terms, the problems in students' uses of verb tenses, word order, subordinate clauses, passive voice, and impersonal constructions have been found to obscure the text's meaning. In the view of faculty accuracy in the uses of these and other syntactic and lexical features is very important and, in most cases, syntactic and lexical errors result in lower assignment grades. THE NEED FOR EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION IN L2 ACADEMIC TEXT Much recent research has shown that exposure to daily and classroom interactions, as well as fluency-oriented instruction, do not represent an effective pedagogical approach to developing syntactic and lexical accuracy. Other | P a g e 10

studies of L2 written text have identified a range of lexical and grammar features that required focused instruction and concerted effort from both teachers and learners. Among the most urgent are: • Expanding the accessible repertoire of common academic nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs (e.g., analysis, develop, dramatic, evidently) • Contextual functions and uses of verb tenses in discourse • Functions and uses of the passive voice in academic text • Functions of adverbs in pivoting discourse and information flow • Regularities in phrase and sentence construction • Backgrounding information in subordinate clauses • Textual features of cohesion and coherence in discourse PREFABRICATED SENTENCES AND LEXICALIZED CHUNKS Grammar instruction has to take place in tandem with instruction on vocabulary and academic collocations. A great deal of research carried out on the effectiveness of learning grammar in contextual lexicalized chunks and sentence stems (i.e., whole sentences and phrases, and recurrent patterned expressions) has shown that these are fundamental to both L1 and L2 learning and use . Stock grammatical and lexical chunks can become an efficient means to expand L2 writers' arsenals particularly when learners are also taught how to substitute discrete elements appropriately and in practical ways. For example, the fact that the function of noun clauses is similar to that of simple nouns can be addressed by means of substitutions in patterned expressions common in academic prose: The experiment/ data/study shows that xxx increases(with yyy)/an increase of xxx/the growth/rise of xxx. In light of the fact that L2 instruction almost always takes place under great time constraints for many teachers and learners, it is important to maximize language gains and make learning as efficient as possible. Using language chunks in instruction and learning is likely to be one of the few available expedient routes to relative L2 accuracy and fluency that leads to production and subsequent automatization. Collocational chunks can consist of entire memorized sentences or phrases that include from 4 to 10 words, and these can allow learners to create new constructions to add to their stock of expressions. In this sense, for learners, grammatical constructions such as commonly occurring sentences, clauses, and phrases can be "viewed as big words" and memorized as lexicalized stems. INSTRUCTED L2 GRAMMAR AND NOTICING Grammar curriculum, even at the intermediate levels of student proficiency, can begin with an examination and analysis of structures in formal written discourse. Initially, the goal of instruction is to develop learners' awareness and noticing of common grammatical features. Building on this foundation, the regularities in grammar structures can be explicitly addressed and practiced in the production of academic writing. . For example, at the middle or high school, grammar teaching can focus on constructions typically found in introductory academic textbooks (e.g., history texts heavily rely on the use of the past tense, and science and sociology books can be practical in instruction on the present tense and passive voice). At higher proficiency levels, instruction can also highlight the effects of grammatical features on context, discourse, and text (e.g., tense uses in generalizations or the important difference between totally and a great deal). In addition, the discourse functions of referential and impersonal pronouns, the hedging functions of modal verbs, and parallel phrase constructions found in abundance in practically all academic prose can be noticed, analyzed, and practiced. The goal of practice with grammar constructions is to help learners develop productive fluency in academic writing and, to some degree, automaticity in generating academic prose. Practice activities can include brief restatements of chapter/section contents, objective summaries, paraphrases, explanations, or using sources as thesis support in short pieces of writing at lower proficiency levels or longer essays for advanced learners.

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VOCABULARY AND L2 ACADEMIC TEXT Current researches outline the enormous task entailed in learning the vocabulary needed to produced academic text in an L2. As a point of reference, they explained that a complete dictionary of the English language contains around 55,000 word families. A word family includes the base form of a word, its inflected forms, and closely related derived forms (e.g., sing, sings, singing, sang, sung, or cold, colder, coldest, coldly,coldness). A 5-year-old NS child has a vocabulary range of 4,000 to 5,000 word families, an average university student 17,000, and a university graduate around 20,000. According to the researchers' estimates, native speakers add approximately 1,000 word families per year to their vocabulary size. Thus, for ESL learners, the gap between their vocabulary size and that of NSs is usually very large because learners who have typically dedicated several years to L2 learning have a vocabulary size of much less than 5,000 words. It is possible, however, as in the case of educated non-native speakers, to achieve a significant growth in L2 vocabulary with persistent and consistent effort. INCIDENTAL LEARNING AND NOTICING In general terms, two types of vocabulary and grammar learning have been identified in research: explicit learning, which takes place through focused study, and incidental learning, when new vocabulary and grammar structures are picked up from exposure to and experience with language. However, research has established that learners typically need at least 10 or 12 repeated exposures to a word over time to learn it well. To further complicate matters, several studies of L2 learners concluded that the long-term retention of words learned incidentally and through exposure in extensive reading can be particularly low. On the whole, because L2 learning is determined by a number of complex factors, such as LI literacy and culture, personal motivation and goals, as well as L1 and L2 similarities, the processes of L2 vocabulary and grammar learning have not been clearly established. In all likelihood, an effective curriculum for L2 teaching relies on both explicit and implicit learning and incorporates a balanced amount of focused study and opportunities for exposure to academic language and text . There is little doubt that for incidental learning of academic text features to occur, students have to have extensive exposure to academic reading with repeated uses of words. Extensive reading can be carried out in and out of class, but an important fact is that students need to be interested in the subject matter to sustain reading the material that often requires them to work hard, concentrate, and memorize new vocabulary. In the days when most forms of entertainment rely on visual media, such as TV, videos, and Internet, the number of learners who read for pleasure has declined. As a result, a majority of readers, especially when they are reading in a L2, read for information. Hence, to increase learners' motivation in extensive reading, the teacher may need to find out what types of subject matter can be of particular use or interest to a specific group of students. For instance, learners who plan to enroll as undergraduates in colleges and universities in English-speaking countries are required to take courses in the disciplines that range from humanities to the sciences, and their exposure to useful vocabulary can be flexible. One of the crucial features of effective learning is noticing words and grammar structures, their uses and meanings, and contexts in which they occur. To learn different meanings that words and constructions may have in different contexts, learners need to pay attention to textual features as they read or write (e.g., in written academic text, the modal verb may rarely has the meaning of permission as is described in most grammar books, but usually has the function of a hedging device). The greatest issue with noticing words and features is that, first, learners need to know what specific text features they should notice and, second, what about these features requires attention. Therefore, it is the teacher's job to guide learners and point out the important and necessary vocabulary and grammar constructions and then discuss their uses and meanings in the academic text.

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Noticing forms of words and structures can take place while students listen and read, participate in activities, or even look for synonyms. To notice uses, meanings, and functions of words and grammar constructions, learners need to be aware of language as a complex system. For example, they need to be able to identify nouns, verbs, prepositions, and adverbs to notice that sometimes words or parts of words can have different syntactic properties and, therefore, play different roles in sentences. Noticing and identifying the functions of words and structures is a slow and laborious process that affects a student's reading speed and takes away some of the enjoyment of reading because it removes attention from the context/messages to focus it on the component parts. In many cases, preteaching texts at the appropriate level of difficulty (i.e., providing definitions of words that occur in the text and explaining the text's purpose) can simplify the learner's tasks particularly when the prereading (or prelistening) activities are followed by a discussion or another focused activity. In grammar learning, becoming aware of how structures are used, combined with explicit teaching, can provide an additional benefit because learners can notice structures that otherwise they may simply miss. When, guided by the teacher, learners are engaged in conscious noticing and learning, explicit teaching of vocabulary and grammar plays a crucial role. For instance, carefully selected thematic writing tasks that require learners to employ specific vocabulary items and grammar structures in text production can lead to increased opportunities to revisit and practice the items learned or noticed earlier. Learners can be engaged in varied tasks to promote vocabulary gains and retention, and teachers can employ diverse attention-focusing techniques when designing classroom-teaching activities. TEACHING L2 WRITERS TO EDIT THEIR TEXT Editing one's own text and learning to identify mistakes is notoriously difficult even for advanced NNS academic writers. Causes of errors can be numerous and may be an outcome of first-language transfer, incomplete understanding of word meanings or syntactic rules, or casual mistakes. In addition, in different lexical and grammatical contexts, seemingly similar types of errors can have a variety of causes (e.g., a lack of subject-verb agreement can be an outcome of a writer's inability to identify correctly the subject noun phrase, a misconstrual of a count for a noncount noun or vice versa or simply omitting the inflection marker -s with either a noun or verb). Although similar types of errors can have numerous causes, it may not be particularly important to figure them out simply because causes of learner problems with particular linguistic features can be highly numerous. However, for academic writers, learning to identify and correct their own errors is essential. In composition and writing instruction, peer editing is often employed with the stated learning goal of providing student writers a more realistic audience than only the instructor, developing learners' editing skills, and establishing a social context for writing. However, peer editing (also called peer response), as a technique for teaching writing, was originally created for NS students who wrote in their L1 and were more socially and culturally open to the idea of reading and responding to their classmates' writing than a majority of L2 writers socialized in collectivist cultures, which place a great deal of emphasis on group harmony and cohesiveness and the importance of saving face. Self-editing instruction can proceed in stages and be selective. The first step is to raise students' awareness of ubiquitous and egregious errors and improve noticing skills. Editing exercises can begin with text/papers that are not students' own and that contain limited and controlled types of errors. At the outset, it is reasonable and manageable to begin self-editing work on four to six types of errors depending on their complexity (e.g., countable and uncountable nouns, singular and plural noun choices, repetitious uses of simple nouns present and past tenses, unmarked tense shifts, and stative verbs. Error exercises of the first group of errors can be assigned as homework and followed up by an explicit in-class analysis and discussion, either in small groups or as a whole class. Both research and experience have shown that explanations of how particular structures can be used in context and typical errors that occur with these structures may need to be persistent and even repetitive to be effective. Explanations of erroneous structures and their correct uses contribute to overall instructional input in L2 learning. | P a g e 13

STEPS IN TEACHING SELF-EDITING SKILLS 1. In the first draft of the first assignment, the teacher should correct all errors of the selected types practiced in the exercises. 2. In the second (final) draft, the teacher highlights all remaining errors of these types and corrects many. 3. In the next assignment, the teacher should correct only some errors of these types in the first draft and underline other errors of these same types, with explicit instructions that the student needs to correct the underlined structures. 4. In the second (final) draft of the second assignment, the teacher should correct only the most complex occurrences of these types of errors, and the responsibility for the rest needs to be shifted from the teacher to the student. 5. It is vital, however, that the first group of error types not be abandoned when editing practice on the second group of errors begins. Rather, students' awareness of and learning to correct errors of various types has to be cumulative. 6. When practice exercises on the second group of errors begin, the teacher should not correct the errors from the first group (except in rare cases of complex constructions), but underline or highlight them in student writing as they occur. Teacher corrections should be limited to the second group of error types (see Step 1). 7. When working on the third (or subsequent) assignment, the first group of errors should become fully a student's responsibility, and the types of errors in editing exercises can be expanded to the next group of four to six types. 8. Again in the first piece of writing that takes place during the work on the second group of errors, the teacher should correct all occurrences and highlight them in subsequent student writing (see Step 2), and then the cycle is repeated. Throughout the course, it is very important that the teacher be consistent in correcting, underlining/highlighting, and shifting the responsibility for editing errors to students. By the end of the course, it is reasonable to expect students to notice and correct 20 to 40 common types of errors in their own writing- some examples of the grouped error types, beginning with the most accessible. The First Group of Error Types • Uncountable nouns (e.g., equipment, information, knowledge) • Irregular plural forms of nouns (focus on academic vocabulary ; e.g., criterion-criteria, phenomenon-phenomena, medium-media, analysis-analyses, basis-bases, hypothesishypotheses) • Quantifiers (e.g., few/a few, little/a little), subject noun phrases with quantifiers and verb agreement (e.g., some/many books + plural verb or some/much information + singular verb) • Subject noun + prepositional phrase and verb agreement (e.g., The researcher with two assistants investigates ... vs. The researcher and two assistants investigate0) ... • Compound noun phrases (e.g., a five-credit-hour university composition course(s), a twenty-five-year-old student(s) vs. the student is twenty-five years old)

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Subsequent Error Types Group • Word order in noun and adjective clauses (e.g., The authors state that they know which way the wind is blowing; It is not clear whether the price will rise; The lab where the research takes place is located in Jeddah} • Also, word order in how- noun clauses (e.g., The scientists described how they identified the virus; The scale was used to measure how much the minerals weighed) • Word order with adverbs of manner, time, and indefinite frequency (e.g., Investors need to make decisions quickly; Usually, car mileage (usually) depends on the size of its engine) • The placement of even and also (e.g., she was even/also elected, (also) she also/even finished the book, ... was high also/even in the 1990s) • The placement and uses of enough (e.g., high enough, enough time/funds, enough of that/them, enough to complete the experiment; optional: the placement and uses of almost, almost + enough, e.g. almost + enough time/funds; almost never, almost the same, almost finished/the tallest, almost + every [+ noun]) • Quantifiers with prepositional phrases (e.g., some/many/most managers vs. some/many/most of the managers in the accounting department), most as an adverb (e.g., the stock price of dot-corns grew the most in 1999} L2 writers may not be able to identify and correct all errors covered in the instruction no matter how much effort and time during composition classes is devoted to the task. Teaching learners to edit their writing independently does not have the goal of making their writing native-like, and it is crucial that both teachers and students set realistic expectations of noticeable improvement in student writing, but not the elimination of errors. The goal of the error awareness practice and self-editing training is to enable students to minimize the number and extent of the most egregious types of errors in their texts. A key to effective and productive teaching of self-editing skills is to hold students responsible for their errors just as they would be in real coursework.

LNGUAGE TEACHING METHODS: TASK-BASED LEARNING, PPP, AND CLIL

The common method to language teaching , and especially to grammar instructions, in our school is the PPP though many teachers do not realize that. The PPP stands for Present Practice and Produce. Many language textbooks follow this method where the teacher presents, the students practice with help of the teacher and peers, and then they produce the language they practiced. This method works especially with grammar instructions, but it is a rather teacher-centered one and its main focus is on form and not meaning. Other innovative methods of teaching language is the task-based learning where students solve nonlinguistic problems ( such as real world problems) that require them eventually to use linguistic features and skills. The task-based focuses mainly on meaning and it is the teacher's responsibility to shift at the end of the task from focus on meaning to focus on form in order to result in lingusitic noticing on part of students. The task-based learning has its own textbooks or teachers can use their own creativity to design task-based activities. Again,

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teachers should shift the focus on meaning on the outset of the activity to focus on form for this method to result in linguistic input and intake. CLIL stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning. It refers to teaching subjects such as science, history and geography to students through a foreign language. This can be by the English teacher using cross-curricular content or the subject teacher using English as the language of instruction. Both methods result in the simultaneous learning of content and English. The CLIL methodology is a new and innovative one that is now gaining momentum around the world. The CLIL Compendium list CLIL dimensions and focuses as: 1. The Culture Dimension    

A. Build intercultural knowledge & understanding B. Develop intercultural communication skills C. Learn about specific neighbouring countries/regions and/or minority groups D. Introduce the wider cultural context

2. The Environment Dimension   

A. Prepare for internationalization… B. Access International Certification C. Enhance school profile

3. The Language Dimension     

A. Improve overall target language competence B. Develop oral communication skills C. Deepen awareness of both mother tongue and target language D. Develop plurilingual interests and attitudes E. Introduce a target language

4. The Content Dimension   

A. Provide opportunities to study content through different perspectives B. Access subject-specific target language terminology C. Prepare for future studies and/or working life

5. The Learning Dimension   

A. Complement individual learning strategies B. Diversify methods & forms of classroom practice C. Increase learner motivation

If you want to find out more on CLIL see Macmillan's OneSTopCLIL at http://onestopclil.com and http://www.clilcompendium.com/

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DATA-INFORMED RATHER THAN DATA-DRIVEN One point is evident, which is also supported by the result of this study and current researches, that our language teaching should be data-informed and not data-driven. This is to say that, our language teaching should be informed by our students' product and analyzed to best suit their linguistic skills rather than based on standardized tests such as the SAT and TOEFL that drives our language teaching. If teachers want to support students for life-long learning and college life, they should inform their teachings based on the linguistic skills that their students are lacking and to set reasonable targets for their students' linguistic outcome.

LIMITATION OF THE STUDY As with most studies, this analytical study has some limitations. Some are listed below: 

  

The study is quantitative and not qualitative as it relies solely on statistics and numbers. A more reasonable study would encompass both quantitative and qualitative data. This can be based on class anecdotes, think-aloud protocols, evaluative forms, and questionnaires. It is hoped that the study paves the way to more advanced and thorough research on L2 writing. More close inspections into student corpus to include whole paragraph features. Evaluation of writing textbooks can be also conducted on other levels such as textbook evaluation checklist.

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