Category Archives: *ESL WRITING

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

• A Case For Marking Every Mistake On Essays

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Lane was worried that her students would become discouraged if they saw a lot of mistakes marked on their papers. So to help them develop confidence in their writing skills, for the first essays that they turned in at the beginning of each term, she was very selective about which mistakes she marked. Thus, their first grades were all relatively high. Unfortunately, this approach had some less-than-desirable outcomes, not only for her students, but also for their teachers at the next level.

First of all, the message to the students was, “You don’t have to carefully edit—you can still get a good grade.”

Also, as the term progressed, she realized that several of the students were still making many mistakes, whether from poor editing and/or from lack of knowledge. At the end of the term, she had to decide to either fail those students, which would be a shock to them since they wouldn’t be expecting that, or pass them, which would be a burden for their next teacher, who would have to deal with students who didn’t have the skills necessary to be successful at that level.

A better approach has been to mark every mistake as long as the teacher is strategic when dealing with essays.

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

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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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• Myth #2 about Teaching ESL Grammar: Teaching Grammar Doesn’t Improve Students’ Writing. (REVISITED)

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Cover Myths shot

I’ve always been perplexed by this claim by some teachers: “Teaching grammar doesn’t improve students’ writing.”  A problem with it is that it doesn’t define what is meant by “teaching grammar” nor what is meant by “improve students’ writing.”  It seems to imply that they have looked at every conceivable way that grammar could be taught and worked with, and they found that none were effective.

When I questioned their basis for this belief, I was often directed to some studies in the 1970s and 80s. Typically, these studies started with students writing a paper. Then for a period of time, they worked on diagramming sentences, doing sentence-combination exercises, identifying parts of speech and completing some grammar worksheets. After this, they wrote another paper, and surprise, surprise, the writing in their essays hadn’t improved. From this, they concluded: teaching grammar doesn’t improve students’ writing.

On top of that, one researcher claimed that his students’ writing got worse, and somehow, he even knew that it was because the students had become obsessed “with avoiding error at all costs, to the point where fluency, content, and reasoning lost their importance.” *

Some teachers have pointed to this “research” as support for their justification to not work with grammar in their writing courses. Their philosophy tends to be: students improve their writing by writing.

How Working with Grammar Can Improve Students Writing

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• ESL Students’ Positive Responses to this Teacher Technique (REVISITED)

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success

          “I feel proud of myself when I see these.”

         “They are helpful because I feel that you are encouraging me and understand what I’m writing.”

These are two of the comments students wrote in response to my survey question: “On your essays, I underline in GREEN words, expressions, sentences, ideas, details and examples that were good.  Are these GREEN underlines helpful to you?”

Most Writing instructors like to give students positive feedback on their essays in addition to indications of where they have grammar mistakes or where they have content problems.  These positive comments often are in the form of a message at the end of the essay.  However, there are a few problems with giving feedback in this end-of-the-essay manner.

First, it takes time and extra mental energy to write these in a style that will be meaningful to students.

Second, they are usually too general to be of much use for students to apply to future writing assignments.

And third, it requires the teacher to write with clear handwriting, something that many of us don’t have a talent for.

In one program, on their essay rubrics, they now “include a section where students can earn points for successful language use rather than being strictly penalized for only misuses.”  This is admirable, but it (1) involves extra work and calculations for the teacher and (2) doesn’t specify exactly what the student did successfully in the essay.

The technique of using green underlines is very user-friendly time-wise and energy-wise for the teacher to use. 

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