The CATESOL Journal

Written corrective feedback has been a long-standing practice among second language writing instructors, yet the efficacy of this practice for long-term development of students’ writing remains uncertain. In th field of writing research, error correction in second language writing continues to be a topic of much controversy. While numerous studies have investigated the long-term effect of written corrective feedback, no consensus has been reached. Challenging the deep-rooted conviction that instructors’ correction is beneficial, this article (a) argues that the role of a writing instructor is not to serve as an editor but to help students to become autonomous self-editors of their own work, and (b) proposes an alternative approach that is designed to develop students’ self-editing skills. Through effective scaffolding and strategy training, writing instructors can develop in second language writers a habit of mind to critically read and edit their own work.