correction revisited
Leverett, T. (2009, Mar.). Red ink and the OK Corral, written for Error correction frontier: The good, the bad and the ugly (Discussion, Writing IS,TESOL 2009, Denver CO USA). Available https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1JCPRiIt2yBGSGCMdwDTbaalPipTvGw1fw3JD52L7DYkLeverett, T. (2009). Red ink and the mud-wrestler’s grasp. Available: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1zpEfLQpYIdR2b682ggi0D9DUUTq5OZR6VLc6thAt2xw.
These two, when I went looking for them, were hard to find. I'd written them, and put them on SIU's web; when SIU took down its web, I put them on Google docs, but I went to find them the other day and Google made me log in. That, and the fact that even typing one title into Google elicited nothing, and now I'm pretty sure they're too hard to find.
One thing I think that happens is that Google gets tired of dead links and gets a little too aggressive about wiping them out. So that, since these titles were associated with dead links, all links with these titles were suspect and pretty soon there are no links to the articles themselves. But the other question involves google-docs itself. Do you really have to log in to read them? If so I can see how the free web now has no links. And I'd like to correct it, for what it's worth. The idea was for people to be able to read them. Not that they do.
This brings me to the topic itself. It is a running argument in my present workplace. We have heard the standard line (Truscott's) that making grammatical correction is not going to improve their English as much as just purely reading more. Many of us believe that it is an important step in the process, whether you see improvement directly (the day after) or not; we know from watching people learn, whether they have learned anything or not, whether we've wasted our time, whether they needed to hear it or not. One thing I find interesting is that in a lab setting you get to watch individual people better and because you know them, you actually see if things did in fact work. You learn better ways of saying things, better ways of handling situations. I'm enjoying that; it's interesting. It is, by nature, a different crowd, and therefore a different question from the one dealt with in the articles above. But similar logic applies: We have to decide what's the best use of our time. And it's an open question, still.
posted by tom @ 12:20 PM
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