Category Archives: 06 ❖ ESL WRITING

These postings include writing activities, teaching techniques and strategies for evaluating writing skills.

• Writing class: Easy, focused, POSITVE feedback on essays.

victory

“Good style!”

Many instructors want to not only point out errors on students’ papers but also encourage them with positive comments about what they did well.  Unfortunately, it can take a lot of time writing out these comments with clear handwriting, and it involves mental energy trying to formulate what to say in a way that students can understand.

There is a method for indicating specifically what the student did well on any writing task, which takes little time on the part of the instructor and results in improved writing in the future.

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• Writing class: How many drafts should ESL students write? Three!

Writing three drafts

Writing three drafts

An academic ESL writing instructor whom I was mentoring recently asked me how I dealt with the different drafts of essays.  She was sure that students needed to write at least four or fives drafts, but she wasn’t sure how she should respond to each draft.

At some point in the writing process, the amount of time and energy that the students and instructor put into an essay outweighs the benefits.  If our goal is to help students develop writing skills and to develop writing techniques, writing more than three drafts can be overkill.  And “marking” more than one draft, can be a less-than-optimal use of time and energy by the instructor.

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