Commenting on Nonnative Errors

Your main objectives should be to...

1. Focus primarily on content
2. Isolate and explain the most significant errors first
3. Limit the number and types of corrections per paper

Look over the following suggestions.  You don't have to use them all -- Pick the strategy that works best with your commenting style...

• Ask the student to help focus your corrections:  Have students write what grammar area you should focus on in a statement on the front of the draft, or ask them to underline the words, phrases, or sentences about which they are doubtful.

• Read the draft two times:
         First reading:       Focus on content.
         Second reading:  Choose one or two glaring grammar areas to circle, correct or comment on.

• Rather than rewriting unclear sentences and phrases, underline them and suggest the student work with a friend or writing tutor to fix them.  Highline tutors have noticed that when teachers rewrite an nonnative speaker's sentence, they have sometimes misunderstood what the nonnative speaker was trying to say, and thus the new sentence misrepresents the student's actual point!

• Provide correct vocabulary choices and prepositions -- often these are related to idiomatic patterns, which take a long time and extensive practice to learn.

• Highlight places where the student has used grammatical form correctly. If the student has used verb tense correctly in some places but not others, you might point out that the problem is one of editing rather than learning the rule.

• Isolate one or two paragraphs -- comment on grammar in those places and indicate that the student should review the rest of the paper for similar errors.

• Distinguish between writers who have tried and those who haven't.  Obvious spelling mistakes and missing capitalization can be signs that the student hasn't taken the time to proofread or edit.   If there is little evidence of self-editing, ask the student to edit the draft before you will grade it.

• Distinguish between "serious" errors and "minor" errors.  Of course "minor" errors can be irritating to native speakers of English, so if they are distracting, let the student know.

• Prioritize what you are grading -- show the student with a checklist or rubric that you value more than just good grammar: focus, evidence, organization.  Some Nonnative speakers believe that grammar is more important than "higher level concerns" because their teachers tend to mark only grammar errors.

• Grade down on areas that interfer with understanding of thoughts -- and tolerate occasional minor errors.  Several types of errors can be tolerated because of the complexity of the English language.  It takes a ong time to use articles and prepositions correctly.

Ideas on this page are from "Responding to Grammar Errors" by Sheryl L. Holt in Approaches to Teaching Non-Native English Speakers Across the Curriculum (1997).

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