Shaughnessy

In Errors and Expectations, Mina Shaughnessy offers "a guide to the teacher of basic writing" by suggesting that the "errors" students make do, in fact, have a logic and an explanation. Teachers of basic writing need to be able to understand these errors as part of a process, and help the student determine why he or she is making these errors. Shaughnessy emphasizes process over product, and while she advocates practice with grammar/mechanics, at the same time she places great importance on proofreading as the final stage of writing.
Important Quotes:

For me, what's most useful are the several sections where she discusses -- indirectly -- invention.
But there are some gems about learning and writing, too.

What I liked the most about this book is that Shaughnessy advocates meeting students "where they are;" her approach is definitely a student-centered one where what the students know is brought into contact with what they do not know, or do not know they know.

As I read, I kept being struck by how much Shaughnessy emphasizes the social nature of language and writing. While one might argue that she uncritically presents academic discourse as the ideal for BW students to master (and I would agree with this critique); Shaughnessy does promote reflective practice and place students at the forefront of teaching writing. It's interesting to see how James Berlin has critiqued Shaughnessy for espousing a cognitive (process) approach, which, for him, means that she ignores the socially constructed nature of language/writing. There are, however, several occasions where Shaughnessy directly discusses the social aspects of language.

Aside from the privileging of academic discourse: it would seem that Shaughnessy is a tad prescriptive (though I do believe in prescriptive teaching if it's reflected upon and it works). My major critique: the implicit assumption that the oral discourse students bring with them to the writing classroom is a hindrance. While Shaughnessy takes careful pains to equate BEV, for example, with SWE, oral dialects/discourses show up throughout her book as problematic and a hindrance to the process of learning to write academic discourse.