Professor Jon Olson, Director of the Center for Excellence in Writing at Penn State, knows that instructors sometimes dread responding to student writing, in part because they’ll have to deal with student error.

Olson, who recently visited Texas A&M to present a talk on “Error and Improvisation,” wants teachers to rethink how they view errors made by their student writers.

“The problem with errors is they come between a writer and the writer’s audience. They divide us,” Olson observes.