The Study of Error

Abstract

It is curious, I think, that with all the current interest in “ Basic Writing,” little attention has been paid to the most basic question: What is it? What is “ basic writing,” that is, if the term is to refer to a phenomenon, an activity, something a writer does or has done, rather than to a course of instruction? We know that across the country students take tests of one sort or another and are placed in courses that bear the title, “ Basic Writing.” But all we know is that there are students taking courses. We know little about their performance as writers, beyond the bald fact that they fail to do what other, conventionally successful, writers do. We don’ t, then, have an adequate description of the variety of writing we call “ basic.”