Student Error in Writing

"[S]tudents write the way they do, not because they are slow or non-verbal, indifferent to or incapable of academic excellence, but because they are beginners and must, like all beginners, learn by making mistakes.  These they make aplenty for such a variety of reasons that the inexperienced teacher is almost certain to see nothing but a chaos of error when encounter[ing] their papers.  Yet a closer look will reveal very little that is random or “illogical” in what they have written.  And the keys to their development as writers often lie hidden in the very features of their writing that English teachers have been trained to brush aside with a marginal code letter or a scribbled injunction to “Proofread!”  Such strategies ram at the doors of their incompetence while the keys that would open them lie in view."

from Errors and Expectations by Mina Shaugnessy