The writing of second language learners of English often presents problems that are different from those found in the writing of native English speaking students. These include culturally conditioned rhetorical patterns that sound ‘strange’ to the native speaker ear as well as unfamiliar grammatical errors that are simply not found in native speaker writing. Teachers with little or no training regarding how to provide feedback on second language writing often find it difficult to decide whether to start correcting all errors (which often results in crossing out and rewriting entire blocks of sentences) or to leave the errors untouched because there are simply too many of them. Neither.
