0008

CIIAPTER 8

comments we offer students need to appear helpful and not censorious. Sometjmcs they will be in the margin of the students’ work or, on a Computer, they can be written as viewable comments either by using an editing program or by writing in comments in a different colour. If we want to offer morę extensive comments, we may need a separate piece of paper - or separate Computer documcnt. Consider tliis cxample in which the teacher is responding in the form of a lelter to a student’s first draft of a composition abont New Years Hve:

Psar Gabrielie.

treally enjoyeti ręading your draft- Ycu have sonie good. ex3tessions, s.g.

.. you look to the dąrk sky and ii ssems like a speciat pady Why dorYtyoo begin wirh.tKat senterice? e.g.

I Iooked up at tho dark sky and it seemed a special party. Ir was liks on oxplosion ęyerywhere. Peóptó were throwing firewórks inio the sky; and eyerywhere thgrc were lights.

Mow at this po>nt you can roli the reader what night it is:

It was New Yiiaris Eve and ei/myona was ceiebrating.

Then you car- exp)ain what New Y(iar’s Eve rr.ear.s in Urugcay, how fatnilies ancf fnends cotr-e togetfst and how evetyone.!1as hopes for the futurę. You can śnd by coming back to the idea of fireworks.

You can orgar	:se your essay to have two times
Past	i iooked up..	Introductior
	it seented
General	Family celebrations in
present	Uruguay are very important. People usually send grestings to eachóther...
Past	:???? -	Cońci‘js*on

figurę 4: From Process Writing by R Wbite and V Armii (Pearson F.ducation Lid)

This type of feedback takes time, of course, but it can be morę uscful to the student than a draft covered in correction marks. It is designed specifically for situations in which the student will go back and review the draft before producing a new version.

\Vhen we respond to a finał written product (an essay or a finished project), we can say what we iiked, how we felt abont the text and what we think the students might do next timc if they are going to write sontething similar.

Another constructive way of responding to students’ written work is to show alternative ways of writing through reformulation (see C2 above). Instead of providing the kind of comments in the example above, we might say, / would express tliis pamgroph slightly differently from you, and then re-writc it, keeping the original intention as far as possible, but avoiding any of the language or construction problcms which the studenfs original contained. Such reformulation is extremely useful for students sińce by contparing their version with yours they discover a lot about the language. Howeier, it has to be done sympathetically, sińce we might end up ‘steamrollering’ our own view of tlnngs, forcing the student to adopt a different voice from the one they wanled to use.

D2 Correcting

Many teachers use correction codes toindicatethal students havemadc mistakes in their written work. These codes can be written into the body of the text itself or in the margin. This makes correction much nealer and less thrcatening than random marks and comments. Different teachers use different symbols, but Figurę 5 shows some of the morę common ones.

Symbol	Meaning	Example error
5	A spelling error	The asnwer is obvious
WO	A mistake in word order	I like verv much it.
G	A grammar mistake	1 ani going to buy some fumitures.
T	Wrong verb tense	I huve scen him yesterday.
C	Concord mistake (e.g. the subject and verb agreement)	People js angry.
A	Something has becn leff out.	He told A that he was sorry.
ww	Wrong word	I atn interestedonjazz musie.
{}	Something is not necessary.	He was not {too} strong ertough.
?M	The meaning is unclear.	That is a verv excited photoeraph.
P	A punctuation mistake.	Do you like [ondon.
F/l	Too formal or informal.	Hi Mr Franklin, Thatik you for your letter...

figurę 5: Correction symbols

In order for students to benefit from the use of symbols such as these, they need to be trained in their use (see D3 below).

We can also correct by putting ticks against good points (or another appropriate symbol, such as, for example, a circlc if the lessons are taking place in Japan) and underlining problems. We can write summarising comments at the end of a student’s work saying what was appropriate and what needs correcting.

D3 Training students

If students are to benefit from our feedback on their writing, they need to know what we mean and what to do about it. This involves training them to understand the process.

We might start by writing incorrect sentences on the board, such as *1 dorit etijoy to watch TV. Students come up to the board and underline the mistake in the sentence (e.g. I don i enjoy to watch TV). Activities like this get them used both to the idea of error-spotting and also to the convention of underlining. Later we can give them several sentences, some of which are correct and some of which are not. They have to decide which is which.

We can now introduce students to correction symbols. We can go through them one by one, showing examples of each category. Once we think students have grasped their meaning, we might get them to try using the symbols themsehes. In the following example (Figurę 6), the teacher has typed up some student work exactly as it was written by different members of a group. The story is on an overhead transparency. Students from a different group tried to use the correction symbols (see Figurę 5) they had recently iearnt about to correct the piece, with partial success:

149