Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
Treatment of Error in Second Language Student Writing is the book many writing teachers have long been looking for: a highly accessible and principled approach to the theory and practice of error treatment that can guide pedagogical decision-making. Unlike a teachers' manual or a handbook that purports to give all the answers needed, Ferris's research-based volume offers a solid scholarly foundation for the practical ideas presented together with an abundance of illustrative sample texts. This book will be a rich resource in language teaching methodology courses, but experienced teachers too will no doubt benefit from the depth and breadth of Ferris's coverage of various error response techniques as well as of the research that motivates those techniques. Ferris offers a realistic, well-reasoned account of what second language (L2) writing teacher--or teachers with L2 students in their classes--need to know about error and how to put what they know to use. She persuasively addresses the fundamental error treatment questions that plague novice and expert writing specialists alike: What types of errors should teachers respond to? When should we respond to them? What are the most efficacious ways of responding to them? And ultimately, what role should error treatment play in the teaching of the process of writing?
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Finally, a book about L2 writing that we can all understand!
Customer Rating:
The field of SLA, or Second Language Acquisition, is relatively new, but the language teaching profession is not. In the short history of SLA, however, researchers have sought to conduct solid L2 research and analyze the resultant data to give us teachers classroom applications of this research.
Unfortunately, two problems have persisted for TESOL and L2 teachers. The first problem is that, compared to other fields, SLA research has been rather scant. Fortunately, researchers continue to work on this. Some researchers, such as Dana Ferris, have continued to contribute greatly to pedagogy by doing work that has more practical than just theoretical value.
The second problem is that L2 research, even when it does have practical classroom application, is often written in such an unfriendly, unintelligible way that it is of little use to the average classroom teacher, i.e., the person who MOST needs to see the applications of the findings.
Luckily for the thousands of ESL, L2, and Generation 1.5 Writing teachers, Dana Ferris has just released TREATMENT OF ERROR IN SECOND LANGUAGE STUDENT WRITING. What a refreshing work! The author has done a great service to our profession by writing to teachers and not using "researcher-ese." Ferris has managed to present information in readable language for BOTH teachers and researchers. I picked up a copy of this book at a conference, started reading it just prior to boarding my flight home, and managed to read most of the book by the time my plane landed five hours later. It is so rare for a book of facts to be so captivating and informative!
I recommend this book HIGHLY to any teacher of ESL, L2 writing, or even L1 (English) composition.
Sincerely,
Keith Folse Coordinator, M.A. TESOL Program University of Central Florida.
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