Presentation Abstract

Those wishing to see them nine foxes framed in a different way can order this painting from Sophy White.

Presentation Abstract (as submitted to TESL Ontario Conference): The traditional approach to editing is largely piecemeal, tackling comma splices one week, capitalizations the next week, subject-verb agreement the next few days, etc. It's hard to see the forest for the trees, or, the vineyard for the vine. The "Catching Nine Little Foxes That Spoil the Vine" Worksheet presents a more holistic picture to the learner and sensitizes one to textual features that--ideational and interpersonal considerations aside--are nonstandard and tend to annoy the native reader. The nine selected features range from Prepositions (improper/absent/extra) and Sentence Integrity (comma splices/run-on sentences/fragments) to Punctuation (proper nouns, hard returns, spaces around words, quote marks, periods, etc.) and Spelling--stuff that sometimes seems trivial to the ESL learner. The fun part in all of this is how adaptable the handout can be in terms of LINC-related themes and peculiar learner difficulties, especially for the Spelling section, where the incorrect sample can be made to reflect the learner's speech, e.g. fox for focus, Madonna for McDonalds. The methodology, too, is fairly rewarding to the instructor besides three fairly predictable mornings. Beginning with the warm-up sheet that encourages the student to "catch five more" errors, and going on to multiple peer checking and teacher-class checking, the process has received a fair bit of anecdotal acclaim from learners. The takeaway is a checklist that is applied to peer writing correction and, hopefully, lifelong sensitivity to scribal "little foxes that spoil the vine."