This principle holds for all students, no matter how high their initial error rate. Too much emphasis on error limits students focus to local sentence problems, when they should instead be focusing most of the time on global rhetorical problems. Over-attention to error makes students cautious when they need to be taking chances, both to discover something to say and to find the sentences to say it. Correct style and usage are more likely to be acquired through reading, writing, and revising than learned through grammar study, rules and maxims, and exercises. Too often, textbook explanations of grammatical concepts are clear to students only if they already know the concept.
Error merits close attention only when students are editing and proofreading final drafts.
Instruction and response to student work must ensure that students take responsibility for finding, diagnosing, and correcting their own errors. The instructor must follow up by checking these corrections and requiring still further work on unacceptable corrections. If the instructor indicates which lines or sentences contain errors, students can find and correct most of their errors in spelling, mechanics, and usage. If students analyze their errors, they will find patterns that can focus and simplify their efforts at overcoming those errors. . . Instruction in error-correction must be individualized.