Though a good amount of research suggests that teacher error correction of L1 student papers is either useless or harmful (Truscott), Dana Ferris' research finds that, given the right situation -- the correct timing, place and the priority -- students tend to request such feedback, even demand it. However, studies suggest that they often do not utilize the feedback, nor does it improve their writings in the long-term. Nonetheless, reasons Ferris, students cannot hope to make long-term improvement without short-term improvement, thus justifying error feedback.
Ferris goes on to stipulate exactly the manner in which such feedback can be most valuable. Prioritizing the feedback is critical; it's suggested that the most effective feedback focuses on frequency of errors. Thus, if a students' chief error is subject-verb agreement, Ferris recommends presenting a mini-lesson to explain the correct usage. The author finds that timing of feedback can be essential; a compromise between the first draft and later drafts would be to communicate with the student one-on-one over a preliminary draft. Giving feedback after the final draft is complete is deemed rather useless. Teachers should take care regarding the manner of feedback, tending toward the indirect approach, where the student is guided to find errors him/herself, though with some specifics, e.g. "What kind of subject-verb problem do we find in line 9?"
As far as written feedback for L1 student papers, students' responses indicated they much preferred feedback at the point of the error vs. end notes. One surprising finding in Ferris' research said that, contrary to many teachers' critiques of other teachers feedback, students had no preference for or against the dreaded RED MARKER.
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