Error and Change in College Student Writing

Written Communication Oct 1988

Error and Change in College Student Writing

RICHARD H. HASWELL

Abstract

Theoretically, the persistence of surface error in student writing may be understood, at least in part, as a normal side effect of development in writing skill. Language tactics newly attempted by a writer increase the likelihood that new mistakes will be made, or old mistakes made anew. This theory, that the context of writing improvement helps explain writing error, is tested by comparing the impromptu essay performance of college freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, and of postcollege employees. Eight surface errors were measured: misinformation of possessives, faulty predication, faulty pronoun reference, faulty syntactic parallelism, mispunctuation of final free modifiers, sentence fragments, comma splices, and misspellings. For each, four error rates were constructed in order to compare different ways of visualizing the relation of error to other aspects of writing. Generally, the findings support the theory: The college students here do measurably improve their writing and do continue making mistakes at about the same rate, but mistakes allied to the improvement. An implication is that undue efforts by teachers to prevent the mistakes may hinder the improvement.

Journal: Written Communication
Published: 1988-10-01
DOI: 10.1177/0741088388005004005
Open Access: Closed
Topics: multilingual writers

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (5)

Mavrou et al. (2023)

What Does Linguistic Distance Predict When It Comes to L2 Writing of Adult Immi…

Written Communication
Dryer (2013)

Scaling Writing Ability

Written Communication
Medzerian (2010)

Style and the Pedagogy of Response

Rhetoric Review
HAAS (1994)

Learning to Read Biology

Written Communication
Tedesco (1991)

Women's ways of knowing/women's ways of composing

Rhetoric Review

Cites in this index (11)

Hull (1987)

The Editing Process in Writing: A Performance Study of More Skilled and Less Sk…

Research in the Teaching of English
Schumacher et al. (1984)

Cognitive Activities of Beginning and Advanced College Writers: A Pausal Analysis

Research in the Teaching of English
Gorrell (1983)

Toward Determining a Minimal Competency Entrance Examination for Freshman Composition

Research in the Teaching of English
Bamberg (1981)

Composition in the Secondary English Curriculum: Some Current Trends and Direct…

Research in the Teaching of English
Greenbaum et al. (1981)

The Recognition of Usage Errors by Instructors of Freshman Composition

College Composition and Communication

Show all 11 →

Daiute (1981)

Psycholinguistic Foundations of The Writing Process

Research in the Teaching of English
Kagan (1980)

Run-on and Fragment Sentences: An Error Analysis

Research in the Teaching of English
Perl (1979)

The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers

Research in the Teaching of English
Harris (1977)

Teacher Response to Student Writing: A Study of the Response Patterns of High S…

Research in the Teaching of English
Kline (1976)

I Know You Think You Know What I Said

College English
Stiff (1967)

The Effect Upon Student Composition of Particular Correction Techniques

Research in the Teaching of English

Also cites 8 works outside this index ↓

10.2307/356486

↗
10.2307/812671

↗
10.1037/0022-0663.71.3.328

↗
10.2307/376679

↗
10.2307/356691

↗
10.2307/377147

↗
10.1080/00220671.1948.10881677

↗
10.2307/356321

↗

CrossRef global citation count: 13 View in citation network →