(SKKN mới NHẤT) efective ways of corecting mistakes in writing skill

A. Preamble.
I. Reason for choosing the research.
It cannot be denied that English is not only the most popular language in the
world but also an important language. Seeing the importance of this language
in international communication and integration, the Vietnamese Education
and Training has chosen Vietnamese the core subject. English is needed in
certain fields such as tourism, trade, foreign company, computer user and so
on. English is also a compulsory subject in the GCSE (General Certificate of
Secondary Education) so every student need to have a certain level of English
to be ready for the exams and after graduation, students at least can
communicate, read and write in English. To help students master the English
skills (reading, writing, listening and writing), we- the teachers of English
need to constantly renovate the teaching methods and curriculum.
When studying English, writing skill is considered one of the most
important skills that learners must master if the really want to be successfully
in communication. Learning English is not an exception, especially in the
period of economic integration when most of the information is in English,
the writing skilled is more demanding. Writing is a skill that people,
whatever jobs they do, need to use every day. In reality, students have met a
lot of different kinds of writing to better their learning process. However,
according to Nunan” In term of skills, producing a coherent, fluent and
extended piece of writing is probably the most difficult thing there is to do in
language”.
II. The aim of the study.
During the process of learning language, makings mistakes is an
unenviable part and it plays an important part. When practicing writing,
students have to face a lot of difficulties in order to have a coherent and
fluent passage. For grade 10 and 11 students, it is essential to show them
basic mistakes and guide them to correct the mistakes because it can help
students better next time and improve their writing skill. For teachers of
English who has the main responsibility to help students improve this skill,

they need to have not only good method of teaching writing skill but also
knowledge and language skill.
There are many factors that affect learners. Correcting mistakes is one of
the important factors. Ii can’t be denied that making mistake is unenviable.
The more students concentrate on their studying, the more they want to create
and develop in their own ways. This is one of the reasons why students make
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more and more mistakes but making mistakes is considered a positive way to
make progress. Basing on the mistakes the students make, they can be aware
of the level at which they are. Moreover basing on the mistakes the students
make also helps teachers to know about the students’ level at certain time and
help them to be better. In the process of correcting the students’ mistakes
teachers also receive students’ response which means that the disagreement
appears not only in teachers themselves but also in students about the
mistakes they make, the ways to correct the mistakes, and the most effective
and reasonable ways to correct mistakes.
III. Research subjects.
To solve the problem facing in the process of teaching writing, I created an
experience initiative in the school year 2018- 2019 “ Some effective
methods in correcting mistakes for grade 11 students”.
With the summarization and analysis the mistakes students often make and
the application of the mistake correction I hope to help students understand
the difficulty in learning how to write, at the same time give students and
teachers effective ways to get the desirable results.
IV. Method of study.
- Research in the teaching of English at Dong Son 2 Upper-Secondary

School.
- Academic writing – Oxford Press
- Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (7th edition)
-
-
B. Problem solution.
I. Theoretical basis of experience initiative.
1. The concept “ writing” in the language theory.
For second language learners, language writing as one of the form of
communication is particularly touch. In order to help learners to write
correctly and fluently, teachers could guide learners to integrate genre and
content reasonably to meet the communicative needs, to motivate their
interest and to improve their writing skills. The paper provides diverse
teaching techniques and strategies for teachers to help learners from
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elementary level, the intermediate level or the advanced level to be fully
exposed in communicative activities in class. And teachers are expected to
give feedback to ideas, felling or perception that student have to try to
communicate through their writing in a sensible way. Teaching writing is a
process of aiding learners to discover themselves and implicit communication
with readers with purposes.
To learners, if vocabulary is the building blocks of language study,
then sentences are the layers of the building, and only after the learners finish
the whole building successfully, could they achieve the final point of writing,
which is commonly regarded as the most difficult language skill in language
learning. Byrne( 1988. P4) provides three reasons to explain why writing is

difficult. First writing itself is a solitary activity without interaction or
feedback but depends solely on the writer himself. Second, during the
process of producing, writer himself need to make the efforts to bridge the
gap and to realize the possibility in communication
However all these difficulties are particularly touch for the second
language (L2) learners. Like Trible ( 1996.14) says when someone learned
how to write, “they are getting involve in an activity in which questions of
social role, power, and the appropriate use of language cannot be avoided”.
To the teacher, the more advanced the language teaching is, the tougher the
teaching of writing would be. Many teaching –English –as-a-foreign
language (TEFL) teachers admit that their knowledge of writting practice was
limited as this create a gap between their ideas and their actually teaching
situation. ( Pennington, 1997 P132). What’s the dilemma of teachers in
teaching writing? How to improve students’ writing skill? What do the
teachers need to do in their teaching? When talking about these questions, the
TEFL teachers should think about the basic elements related with L2 writing
, the L2 writer, the reader, the L2 text and the writing text.
TEFL teachers’ dilemma.
No one has doubt about the function of using a language , that is, to
communicate. Nevertheless, the ways of exchanging information by
language are limited, in which the main style are gestures, meaningful
pictures, speaking and listening, and what’s more, writing is the most
meaningful and permanent way to pass the knowledge on one generation
after another. “ Writers and readers obviously do not interact in the sense that
they take turns as do speakers and listeners.” ( Nystrance, 1986 P40) .
Therefore a successful communication between writers and readers counts a
lot on what and how do the writers provide information for their various kind
of audience. Ur ( 1996.P163) provides the standards of language in writing:
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careful construction, precise, and varied vocabulary, correct expression in
general, and the slow and reflective nature of the process of writing. These
idea standard are not only expected by the writers but by the teachers as well,
nevertheless, in the EFL writing classroom there are always some
divergences between the ideal expectation and reality , the writer the reader,
the writer and the written works, etc.
Differences exist between first language ( L1) writing classrooms and second
language (L2) one , which are the obvious fact that TEFL teachers should be
concerned with in planning and executing. The common goal of both younger
and elder students in sitting in the EFL classroom is to study the language but
many adult learners seem to expect more since they desire to accomplish
more practical goals, such as to conduct business in English , which is
defined as instrumental motivation by Gradner and Lambert ( Leki, 192, P43)
. Thus genre and content will be greatly colored by their impetus for study a
foreign language and their life experiences drawn from outside the school.
Caudery ( 1996, P17) summarizes the points of difference between the L1
teaching situation and the L2 one , i.e. delayed development in writing skill
and culture- based differences. Therefore, two problems are related in the
teaching of written: One is to form grammatical sentences and the other is to
fulfill a give rhetorical aim ( Byrne, 1980,p.172). The imitating of others
mechanically but the proper controlled and guided writing is still the main
task in teaching.
In order to help L2 learners write correctly and fluently, teacher should
understand the aim and the process of their learning. Geist (1996,P.51)
summarizes three dimensions of learning , which are the acquisition of
techniques skills through observation of the knowledge of rules, a vocabulary
and a systematic understanding via verbal explanation or instruction. Thus,

what teachers need to do is to help learners find the real purposes to write, to
show them on how to do it, to give learners the internal impetus to reflect on
their own.

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Some factors need to be considered according to Raines (1983)
SYNTAX

CONTENT

Structure

Appropriation, clearness…

GRAMMAR

PROCESS

tenses

ideas, draft, check

articles, pronouns

FORM

OBJECT-

reader
writing,
pronunciation,clear,

effective

ideas

punctuation
STRUCTURE

AIM

passages

reasons to write

topics

coherence

CHOICE
Vocabulary, idiom, ways of expression
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2. Procedures of teaching writing.
According to Tribble (1996), there are four steps:
- Step1. Before writing: This is the step that learners do before draft writing.
This includes the topic selection, thinking, taking notes, discussion, idea
arranging, making outline, information collecting. (For example,
interviewing, searching information in library, processing information).
- Step 2. Writing draft: This is the process by which the writers brainstorm
the ideas to write sentences, the passages, focus on explanation, clarify and
link the ideas.
- Step 3. Correction: This is an important step to have a completing passage.
Writers will think about what learners expect, readers are the people who the
passage focuses on. For example: polishing the structure, linking the ideas or
adding the linking words.
- Step 4. Edition: Writers check the form of the passage such as dictation,
grammar, marks.
As we see from the above point of view, writing is a one-sized process and
there is no connection with readers. Reid(1993) also has the same point of
view but he adds three more steps in writing process: feedback, evaluation
and after writing, which makes the writing process more reasonable.
In short, steps of writing process according Reid (1993) can be illustrated
with the following outline.
BEFORE WRITING

DRAFT

RESPONSE

CORRECTION

EDITION

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ASSERTMENT

AFTER WRITING

II.The concept of “ mistakes” and “correcting mistakes”.
1.The definition of mistakes.
1.1.Definition.
There are many definitions given by famous researchers such as : Abbort
( 1981), Edge ( 1989) , Mc Kay( 1989) , Goldstein ( 1990), Hubbard ( 1991),
Klassen ( 1993)., Crosling ( 1996) etc. Although they give their ideals in
different ways but they have common ideas about the nature and function of
mistakes.
Klassen ( 1993) has a simpler definition about the mistakes . According to
him, mistakes is “ a form of structure that the native speakers cannot accept
because of the unsuitable using”.
Meanwhile, Crosling (1996) gives his own ideals in which he attach much
importance in criterion “ Any misleading in method comparing with ordinary
thing is considered mistake”.
On referring to mistake, some researchers have the same point of view: not
only learners but native speakers as well make mistakes. Native speakers
often make mistakes at two levels: form mistake and expression mistake and
the latter is the kind of mistake that we often make. So, mistakes should be
considered extra ordinary and unsuitable. We can see that making mistakes
happens in all level of languages from form mistake to expression mistake.
1.2. Mistake category.

Lippman, J. ( 2003) divides mistake into two types: general mistakes and
specific mistake.
General mistake : incorrect sentence for example: incorrect word order,
conjunction unsuccessful communicative result.

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Specific mistake: incorrect sentence elements: tense, article, auxiliary
incomprehensible communicative result.
General mistake include:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Theoretical point.
Structure
Basis
Compatibility and consistence
The suitability to the subject and purpose.

Specific mistake include:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Dictation
Syntax
Grammar
Punctuation
According to Lippman ( 2003)

2. An overview about correcting mistake.
2.1. Correcting mistakes.
When asserting an article we have the term “feedback” in which there
are two things that needs to be distinguished: assessment and
correction. In assessment, it is simple that learners are aware whether
they write well or badly. In correction, learners have detail information
in their article such as explanation and provide better way of writing.
In principle, correction should and must make remark on whether the
writers write correctly or incorrectly, but in general, both learners and
teachers consider this a process of correcting mistakes.
2.2. Major methods in correcting mistakes.
In teaching process, teachers often have to deal with some problem
such as “ what mistakes need to be corrected” and “ how to correct
effectively”.
Gower and Walter (1983) give four problems for teachers to solve
when correcting students’ mistakes, they are “ what to correct, when to
correct, how to correct and how many mistakes need to correct”.
Meanwhile, Raines (1983) also suggests seven main rules to correct
mistakes.
1. With students’ articles, there is no need to mark the mistakes but
teachers still can identify the mistakes that need correcting.
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2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Identify mistakes carefully and find the causes.
Find the part that students do well.
Take note the part that has mistakes.
Have the signals that show the mistakes.
Give reasons, correct or delete mistakes carefully.
Finally: correcting mistakes carefully and help students to have
that habit.

To clarify on how many mistakes should be corrected Gover and Walter give
some suggestions:
- Draw students’ attention to the correction process.
- Spend little time on correcting each student’s mistakes, concentrate on
common mistakes.
- Show students the mistakes they have just made.
- Show students the kinds of mistake they made.
- Give students chances to correct themselves.
- If students cannot correct mistakes themselves, ask others to help.
- If the above steps are unsuccessful, teacher will help students to correct the
mistakes by the following ways:
Edge ( 1998) also gives three basic steps to correct mistakes.

- Self- correction.
Teachers show students their mistakes because they need to know what
mistakes they have made before correcting them.
- Peer correction.
Learners work in pair or group to find out their mistakes. This will attract all
student s to correct mistakes, make them more active and less dependent on
teachers.
- Teacher correction.
Teachers find out the meaning that students want to convey in the incorrect
sentences and guide them to express in other way.
3. The relationship between mistakes, correcting mistakes with the
process of teaching and learning writing skill.
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Making mistakes is unavoidable in learning, through this learners create
important and necessary traits for learning a foreign language. Making
mistakes is the way learners check what they have learned, through that they
will master the language.
For teachers, basing on the mistakes students make help them assert students’
level, decide what to teach students to help them perfect.
Correcting mistakes also have good effect on the process of teaching and
learning the language. By self correcting, peer correcting and listening to
what teachers comment students can make progress. Especially, writing skill
need high accuracy in words and expressing meaning.
C. Current status of the problem before applying innovative experience.
I. Introducing an overview of units.
Dong Son II high school is a young school. Moreover, students here have

few chances to study English intensively because they are not aware of the
importance of learning English. They only know little about English.
Base on the fact of teaching and correcting students’ mistakes, we can see the
problems of this matter as following:
+ Both teachers and students have positive manner towards correcting
mistakes and consider correcting mistakes a necessary process, an important
factor in improving students’ writing.
+ Although correcting mistakes plays an important role in writing process
and both teachers and students try hard, students’ writing does not improve
much. The reason is that many mistakes are not pointed out and corrected
after teachers give general comments about students’ writing, so students
cannot know what mistakes are though they read their articles again.
+ There are many kinds of mistakes that are difficult for both students and
learners to recognize such as mistakes related to logic, expression or word
choice. For example: Is there any electrical equipment in this room?(correct).
Is there any electric equipment in this room?( incorrect) . Teachers and
students usually pay attention on dictation, grammar or structure mistakes.
In general, there are still many problems in correcting students mistakes
especially grade 10 when they first meet some types of writing such as
writing a letter, writing an invitation, writing a report and so on. Therefore, to
improve the quality of teaching and learning in general as well as to have
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better result in correcting mistakes, we should apply effective methods in
correcting mistakes.
II. Solutions to the problem.
1. Teacher:

1.1. Steps in marking students’ articles:
- Identify what mistakes need to correct.
It is not necessary to correct all the mistakes in students’ writing. Teacher
should choose what is important to correct, this depend on the aim of the
lesson.
- Decide how many mistakes need to be corrected.
Teachers can decide to correct basic and serious mistakes in order not to
make students feel disappointed because they may makes so many mistakes.
However, it also depends on the students for teacher to decide on the quantity
of mistakes that need to be corrected because some students feel shy when
they makes so many mistakes while others do not feel satisfied if teachers
give them vague comments.
- Form the method of correcting.
Teachers should use signals when correcting mistakes. This is convenient
because teachers do not have to write the full form of words and phrases,
especially when there are many articles needed correcting.
- Signals and their meanings:
GR: grammar

Y upside down: word missing

Voc: vocabulary

!: careless error

Sp: spelling error.

 Good, well done

P: punctuation error

? I don’t understand.

V: verb tense error

Pre: preposition

W.O: wrong word order

 Good point

W.W: wrong word use

Cap: capitalizing this word

Agr: agreement

( ) unnecessary word
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 Omitting this word
- Give feedback carefully.
Giving feedback play an important role in encouraging students to revise the
lesson and study harder. Besides, teacher also needs to give positive
comments on what students have tried to do.
- Use different colored pen.
Teachers usually use red pen when correcting students’ mistakes so that

students can easily recognize their mistakes. But if teacher use red pen to
correct every mistakes, it will make students fell shocked and as a result they
feel shy and don’t want to write any more. Correcting mistakes is not simply
a way to show students what is correct or incorrect but it is a way to
encourage students write and correct mistakes themselves. Teacher should
use pen in different color or pencil. This will help student understand that
teacher is giving them suggestions.
- Mark on the side of the paper.
Teacher applies this when students are used to the signals of correcting
mistakes. Students can themselves find mistakes in the lines that have
signals.
1.2. Steps after giving feedback to students’ writing
- Giving feedback in front of the class.
Students will learn more if teacher have time to correct mistakes in front of
the class. Students can avoid making mistakes when they listen to teachers’
comments on their friends’ mistakes. There are some kinds of mistakes
related to expression that teacher cannot write on students’ papers so in the
process of correcting mistakes, students will have more chances to know and
understand.
- Provide students the basic writing rules and exercises related to the
mistakes that students often make.
Teacher can provide students short memo. For example, the structure of
an invitation letter) or exercises on correcting mistakes.
2. Students
2.1. Change students’ attitude toward mistake correcting.
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In the past, many teachers think that making mistakes is not good. For them,
students making mistakes are stupid, lazy or it is because sometimes students
do not pay attention to what teachers say or they do not do carefully.
Teachers just say “sit down” as if that student has just do something wrong.
However, with the new approaching method, it is considered that making
mistakes means finding new way of expression, students associate theory
with practice. Writing is a process. We cannot expect students to write
correctly right from the beginning. Teacher should make students understand
that correcting mistakes is the way that help them to perfect their writing skill
and an important part in studying. This will help students be more confident
before writing.
2.2. Emphasize the importance of reading the passage again and
correcting mistakes.
Correcting mistakes is necessary, it is not a problem. Students need to
know that it is a necessity in learning writing skill. Teachers should make
correcting mistakes an activity in class. Teachers should also encourage
other students if they find out their friends’ mistakes. Teacher should raise
students’ awareness in reading their passages again and correcting
mistakes will help them be more aware of correcting their own passages
as well as their friends’.
2.3. Guide students the way to find out and correcting mistakes.
Using the system of signals is really effective. And this will help to
encourage students to correct their own mistakes as well as their friends’
mistakes. Teachers need to give the system of signals clearly right after the
beginning of teaching writing.
For example: Find the mistakes in the biography writing of Jack Friedhamm
and the paragraph about collection.

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Key:
Jack Friedhamm was born in New York on October 25, 1965. He
began school at the age of six and continued until he was 18 years old. He
then went to New York University to learn Medicine. He decided on
Medicine because he liked biology when he was at school. While he was at
University, he met his wife Cindy. Cindy was a beautiful woman with long
black hair. They went out for years before they decided to get married. Jack
began to work as a doctor as soon as he had graduated from Medical School.
They have had two children named Jackie and Peter, and have lived in
Queens for the past two years. Jack is very interested in painting and likes to
paint portraits of his son Peter.

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2.4. Get students write draft many times.
Writing draft again and again is considered an effective way to correct
mistakes. This method helps students take part in the process of correcting
mistakes. To do this, we need to follow the steps:
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2.5. Show students the mistakes needed to find out in each draft.

In this activity, students need to write three times so that the last draft can
be perfect. Each time, students need to pay attention to kinds of mistakes
as the following table:
The 1st time
Mistakes Check the
needed
and logic
to pay passage.
attention

The 2nd time

3rd version

structure Focus on the using of Find out all mistakes
of the vocabulary, grammar,
form.

2.6. Give students higher marks if they can find and point out mistakes.
This will encourage students to take part in mistake correcting activities.
2.7. Evaluate students’ improvements after drafting.
Teacher can see students’ improvement after drafting. And teacher can
give students higher marks if they make progress.
III .The effect of the experience initiative.
This initiative is made to point out and analyze the grade 10 and 11 students
as well as provide teachers with useful methods in teaching writing skill.
In school year 2018-2019, I applied this method in teaching class 11A7 and I
recognized that students get much better.
Checking writing skill by a writing test after studying unit
mistake

grammar

vocabulary

dictation

0-5

4 students

10 students

6 students

6-9

11 students

12 students

13 students

10-15

13 students

12 students

16 students

Over 15

14 students

9 students

8 students

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Basing on the mistakes, we can see that at the beginning of the school year,
students’ writing is not good and equal with the percentage of over fifty
percent of students make more than 10 mistakes.
Checking the mistake-finding -skill by requiring students to find and correct
10 sentences in fifteen minutes with students of different levels we have the
following result.
Student

Find out 1-4
mistakes

Find out 5-8
mistakes

Find out 9-10
mistakes

Weak

5/5 students

0/5 students

0/5 students

Medium

3/5 students

2/5 students

0/5 students

Good

2/5 students

3/5 students

0/5 students

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The result after writing of five students or five groups is as following:
Mistake

Grammar

Vocabulary

Dictation

0-4

15 passages

15 passages

17 passages

5-8

15 passages

17 passages

12 passages

9-12

5 passages

2 passages

8 passages

over 12

5 passages

3 passages

3 passages

Although the result is not perfect, we can see that if we teachers change the
content as well as the methods, of teaching, we will surely have good result
and we will meet the object of studying language, that is using language in
everyday life.
D. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.
I. Conclusions.
Writing is an important skill for language learners. To be good at this skill,
we need a lot of time and effort. The problem here is that teachers need to
find out methods of teaching writing effectively. On the other hand, we can
see that making mistakes is inevitable and it plays an important part in
learning language. Mistakes are considered positive, and they makes students
have more experience, awareness and better result in learning.
In teaching, I find that this experience initiative is extremely helpful for both
myself and other teachers. It helps us more positive in teaching because
teaching writing for high school students is not easy, and it requires a great
deal of effort and patience. We cannot have result overnight because it takes
a long time to achieve.
We can apply this experience initiative for all students in high school because
there are writing lesson in every unit of the textbook.

II. Recommendations.
To be successful in helping students to correct mistakes in passage to make
progress in writing, teachers need to enthusiasm, love for children and good
knowledge. Besides, leaders of school need to support, encourage and guide
teachers.

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In the next school year, I would like to apply my experience initiative in extra
writing skill so that students have more chances to practice.
This experience initiative is what I have through teaching. However, it needs
to be modified in order to be perfect.
I really hope to have your ideals about my experience initiative to make it
better.
CONFIRMATION OF THE
PRINCIPLE

Thanh Hoa, the twentieth of May, 2019
I am sure that this is my own work. I do
not copy from any other writers.

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