1.

) A multilingual writer has a lot of grammar "mistakes"

You receive a paper by a multilingual student, and there are a lot of grammar
mistakes. Most of the mistakes don't affect your ability to understand, but you
know that these mistakes are not consistent with the writing style favored in your
field, and you want to help them improve. Take a look at the introduction
paragraph of a sample student assignment:

Introduction

Female plays a big role in improving countries economic growth due to her strong

participation in any sectors. According to Klasen countries who have discrimination between

male and female are experiencing low economic growth than the others who do not (1999).

Saudi Arabia one of the biggest oil producers in the world, and it has low women labor force

participation in the world. Based on General Saudi Arabia Authority for statistics, women who

are participating in the labor force only 15% of the population, which is very low comparing to

men who are around 76%.

What should you do to help this student? There are many possible ways to give
feedback:
a.) Correct or identify all the grammar errors

Female plays a big role in improving countries economic growth due to her strong

participation in any sectors. According to Klasen countries who have discrimination between

male and female are experiencing low economic growth than the others who do not (1999).

Saudi Arabia one of the biggest oil producers in the world, and it has low women labor force

participation in the world. Based on General Saudi Arabia Authority for statistics, women who
are participating in the labor force only 15% of the population, which is very low comparing to

men who are around 76%.

Providing this kind of feedback is time intensive, and doing it "correctly" is often
impossible for most of us! Moreover, it likely will do more harm than good.
Research about second language writing shows that grammar corrections on papers
do not help students learn or avoid making the same mistake in the future.
Instructors often correct subjective errors when it's a matter of style rather than an
objective error. This kind of grammar feedback is difficult give, takes a lot of time,
and it doesn't even help. Even if you provide an explanation for why something is
"wrong," these kinds of lessons are ineffective at best and harmful at worst.

b.) Identify a patterns of grammar errors and point student to lessons /

resources

Introduction

Female plays a big role in improving countries economic growth due to her strong

participation in any sectors. According to Klasen countries who have discrimination between

male and female are experiencing low economic growth than the others who do not (1999).

Saudi Arabia one of the biggest oil producers in the world, and it has low women labor force

participation in the world. Based on General Saudi Arabia Authority for statistics, women who

are participating in the labor force only 15% of the population, which is very low comparing to

men who are around 76%.

This approach to grammar feedback is better than correcting or identifying all of a

students' grammar errors, but it's still problematic. In the example text above, there
are some patterns of error (consistency with the same kind of grammar error),
namely word form (e.g., using an adjective instead of a noun). I could identify this
pattern of error for the student (with feedback like "I noticed that you have a lot of
grammar errors that are based on using the wrong word form, so here is a link to a
lesson about word form:..."). You may not be able to identify the kinds of errors
(which is fine because it's not your role!), and you may even wrongly identify
kinds of errors, potentially confusing students. It’s great to point students to
resources that are related to the pattern of error you identified, but not all online
lessons are effective for the level of your students, and in many cases, finding a
lesson that is applicable and helpful could be very time consuming. Please note
that the UW-Madison Writing Center has many resources for teaching English
language conventions, and we encourage you to point students towards these
resources. Check out our workshop offerings at this link: UW-Madison Writing
Center WorkshopsLinks to an external site..

c.) Ignore grammar errors and respond to the student about what the
assignment is assessing

Introduction

Female plays a big role in improving countries economic growth due to her strong

participation in any sectors. According to Klasen countries who have discrimination between

male and female are experiencing low economic growth than the others who do not (1999).

Saudi Arabia one of the biggest oil producers in the world, and it has low women labor force

participation in the world. Based on General Saudi Arabia Authority for statistics, women who

are participating in the labor force only 15% of the population, which is very low comparing to

men who are around 76%.

This kind of feedback only responds to the content, focusing on the purpose of the
assignment. Even though there are many grammar issues in this text, you can still
understand the content, ideas, and structure of the paragraph. There are many
things that the instructor could be assessing with this assignment, and the feedback
that would be the most useful would be feedback related to that purpose. As a
CommB instructor, your intellectual work is responding to the content of the
writing just as your students' work is in the content of their writing, not the
mechanics. If your assignment assesses grammar, then consider pointing to
patterns of error. If your assignment doesn't assess grammar, ignore issues of
grammar where they don't affect meaning.
When considering our guiding principles for promoting language justice with this
scenario, we should consider the harmful ideologies at play that may tell us that the
presence of numerous grammar errors is evidence that the intellectual work of the
student is good. We also should consider World Englishes. Perhaps some of these
errors are consistent with the rules of a version of English that is different from the
version of English often expected in academic writing.
The kind of grammar feedback you give, if any, will depend on many factors (e.g.,
whether or not your assignment assesses grammar, the degree to which grammar
issues affect your ability to understand the writing, your comfort with English
grammar, how much time you have, your relationship to the student, etc.). There's
no one, right way to give grammar feedback, but in general it's best to ignore
grammar errors that don't affect your ability to understand and focus on the
content and what the assignment is meant to assess over any other features of
a text.