Esmeralda Huerta

November 20, 2016 1

Part D - Pair Work

With the activities throughout this project, I got to experience handwritten and electronically
marking errors on two sample essays. I got to focus on the students error correction by using a
pen, highlighters; electronic features on Word Document, and to add any marking techniques
that made sense to me. I wrote and commented on the margins to elaborate on my explanation of
the errors. This has been a challenging error correction project because I did not know during the
editing process that Id be focusing on error categories in the student sample essays. During the
process, I focused on color coding and highlighted all occurrences of errors that I initiated in
each of the error categories of the chart. I used the chart that contains the Error Categories with a
brief descriptive text on each row. The chart contains a list with verbs errors, noun ending errors,
article errors, wrong word, sentence structure, spelling, and others along with a descriptive
meaning of each text. I used different colored markers and pens to help me identify each error
category and this helped me to highlight the specifics. I was able to experience and number each
error that I highlighted sequentially and completed the error number chart by tallying each
category and completed the total number of errors. There were problems that I encountered
during this editing process, knowing the specific meaning of each error categories chart and
looking for it on the essay was time consuming and overwhelming. I was highlighting the
different types of error categories that would help me to identify each error but it was exhausting
to me working on both sample papers. During the process it took too much time locating the
error and using the different color highlighting to follow the error category. It was very time
consuming for me and not time effective. On the final stage of error correction of highlighting
coding and following the error categories chart, I tallied all the consecutive errors onto the
number chart to add up the total errors on both samples. This activity taught me the process of
error correcting and locating the specific errors by following the charts and highlighting the

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specific errors and tallying the errors onto the number chart to visually see the results of how
many errors occurred in the sample essays.
The reason I didnt choose selective error correction, is that it does compromise feedback
wherever a teacher can modestly mark only a limited number of errors or all of them. This
approach of selective correction is persuasive and less overwhelming to teachers and students to
consent for prioritizing on numerous patterns of error that are made by individual students.
Within this is an opportunity to simplify student progress toward enhancing effective selfstrategies skills (Ferris & Hedgcock, 2015, p. 284). Students enhance their error correction
strategies by using self-editing on their own writing before the teacher gives them feedback and
suggestions to direct students to edit. However, when I have my own classroom, I would use the
selective correction technique to edit the essentials on students common patterns of errors and
therefore they can have the opportunity to revise the errors on their paper on their own. I believe
students can enhance the error correction strategies by self-editing on their own before receiving
a teachers feedback and corrective commenting. However, for this activity, I did choose the
comprehensive error correction so I can examine that I can visually see how difficult it is to
correct errors that are confined and how it is unbearable to correct every individual student
writing. I was a novice in every error correction on a student paper, but imagine if I have six
classes with thirty students in each and I have to use comprehensive error correction on all of
their writings, that would be so overwhelming and time consuming. It is impossible to correct
every error comprehensively because most of the students wont pay any attention to the errors.
After I read all the materials, I agree with most scholarly authors that teacher should not edit all
the errors in student essay because it is exhausting and take too much time to edit all errors in the
student paper.

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The easiest error correction method in my opinion, is using Microsoft Word. It is

efficient, and I believe this is easy to use for teacher and student learning. It is effective, and
there are many options teachers can use with the program. One can use the different types of
features, text and symbols to do error correction. I am more comfortable with electronic error
editing because I can efficiently use it well. Im comfortable using the program because I use it
all the time, and it is effective as a teacher and student writing tool. While I was using the
program on the two sample papers, I used different types of color highlights, italic, bold,
strikethrough, underlined texts and fonts throughout the essays to follow the error categories
chart. I used Microsoft Word to elaborate corrective comments on the margins. However, when I
was editing the printout essay it was problematic to elaborate on my commenting and
suggestions on the margins. The paper doesnt have enough space to complete my elaboration on
commenting and I didnt enjoy handwritten error correcting and commenting. I was limited on
what I could elaborate on. Microsoft Word gives me the opportunity to elaborate on my
comments and highlight the areas on the sample essay where errors are located. The error
corrections I believe would be beneficial to the students writing, is the corrective commenting
because I can highlight a sentence or a word and then comment on the margin to elaborate on my
suggestions. Using the features of strikethrough text can be helpful for students to omit text from
their essay. I believe color coding can be helpful to point out the error patterns on their writing
and it can visually show them why they made those errors. It is beneficial for students do selfediting so they can practice the altered types of editing features in the Microsoft Word program.
During our discussion, in Part A, both of us marked every possible error and commented
on the paper. I see similarities in our analysis and activities in Part A & B. Our results from the
error chart presented the most errors located in the error categories chart that are; the article,

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wrong word such as word choices or word form, noun endings and others, such as punctuation,
and capitalizations errors were corrected in the essay. We both did direct feedback on the
students paper that provides suggested corrections for the student to revise. The differences I
had from Patricks method, is where I used the color coding methods to highlight the essay to
locate the error correction categories. I think that when I use the highlighting error strategy, it
can be confusing because of how the essay looks, distracting with many colors. However,
Patrick used the narrower categories coding throughout both essays and it looked very simplistic
and neat by using this method. The differences from Patricks and my editing on both essays, is
that I used mostly direct feedback error correction. The comparison between Patricks and my
editing strategies, I believe in that using the narrower categories coding is more effective for the
teachers time and the student can have the opportunity to revise their own paper by following
the teachers narrower categories coding. Another difference in Patricks editing is that he used
the selective error correction and I used the comprehensive correction error throughout our
essays. I agree with Patrick, comprehensive correction does disrupt the students content in the
essay because everything is marked with error. On part C, the differences in our editing, are
where Patrick used the indirect feedback such as the error location throughout both essays and
then commented, to help direct the student to do their own revising of their paper. However, I
used again the direct feedback strategies with different types of fonts text to help identify the
error categories differences. I learned from Patricks activities that he used selective error
correction and that he stated that he focused on the most serious and frequent errors of the essays
that needed to be corrected or addressed. However, he is against comprehensive correction that
could disrupt the students content in the essay with too many marked errors, because it can
causes a distraction. He stated marking errors and using the error codes can be very beneficial for

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the students learning and this gives them a hint that they need to find the solution to what needs
to be corrected by following the error coding while they are in the revision process.