Consciousness-raising, Error Correction and Proofreading

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Josephine O'Brien

Abstract

The article sets out to explore the impact of developing a consciousness-raising approach in error correction at the sentence level in order to improve students’ proofreading ability at the level of text. Learners of English in a foreign language environment frequently fall into a reliance on translation as a composing tool and while this may act as a scaffold and provide some support with some utterances, it frequently leads to predictable and persistent errors. Such fossilization leads to on-going inaccuracies that detract from student composition and that require focused instruction and repeated practice in order to eradicate the errors. The current paper reports on an experiment in consciousness-raising about specific categories of errors with a group of 30 trainees teachers in Zayed University, Dubai during the spring semester 2014. Results on post-tests compared with scores on the pre test indicate a significant improvement in students’ performance as a result of focused instruction. 

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How to Cite
O’Brien, J. (2015). Consciousness-raising, Error Correction and Proofreading. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 15(3), 85–103. https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v15i3.13284
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