Tag Archives: positive feedback

• Easy Editing-Awareness Technique for ESL Students

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Cover edit ICE shot

This can drive a teacher crazy. You remind students to proof-read their paper before turning them in. However, after class, as you read them, you continually see basic grammar mistakes that you are sure they should have been able to have caught.

It’s quite common for ESL students to have a distorted view of their writing skills. They think that they can adequately edit their papers as they are writing, and thus, feel little need to re-read them before turning them in.  Little do they realize that a plethora of simple grammar and spelling mistakes on a paper can give the reader/teacher a lower opinion of the students’ skills.

I have found that the following little requirement has greatly transformed students into much more diligent self-editors.

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• Powerful Tool for ESL Writers: Giving Examples in Essays.

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(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*

A researcher asked people in a retirement home what they regret.  He found that older people regret not the things that they did, but rather the things they didn’t do, for example, never learning to salsa dance, never traveling the world or never learning to play a musical instrument.

That paragraph, from Brain Briefs by Markman and Duke, I think illustrates the importance of examples. Imagine what we’d wonder about had they not included those three examples.

I have found a great improvement in the clarity of my students’ writing and in my enjoyment of reading their papers after they’ve practiced using examples and then applied that tool. I’ve often noticed that they seem liberated by this tool. If they are struggling with how to explain something, they can almost always come up with an example to do it.

In this post, I’ll include:

  • Samples of places in a paper where an example would be helpful.
  • Samples of how students at different writing-skill levels successfully used examples to explain everything from simple ideas to abstract ones.
  • Effective and simple ways for teachers to indicate to students where to include them in their papers and to encourage their use.
  • Exercises to help students develop this tool that you can use with your students.
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• The Teacher’s Role During Student-Centered Conversation Activities (on YouTube)

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Cover t-role Blog wt Youtube logo shot

(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)

Here is the link to the YouTube video: The Teacher’s Role During Student-Centered Conversation Activities

In this video, I discuss how teachers can provide valuable feedback to students about how they are carrying out pair/small-group activities. I explain how the teacher can be observing students and keeping brief (realistic) notes for each student, even in large classes.  I also share some user-friendly feedback forms which teachers can fill out and give to each student.  See link below.  This process can provide students with specific information about how they can improve their conversation skills when working in pairs/small groups.

Here is the link to the feedback forms that I had discussed in the video which you can download for free to use you’re your students: Feedback forms for Conversation Classes 3

For more video discussions about teacher ESL, visit my YouTube channel: . Student-Centered Teaching ESL by David Kehe

David Kehe

• The Eyes Have It: Keeping Students Focused During Group Work

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Eyes image

(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*

I once had a colleague who was feeling distraught because her students didn’t seem to take group work seriously.  Her students tended to chat instead of doing the task and often finished early without completing it.  She asked me to observer her class to see if I could come up with any suggestions.

Within a few minutes of observing her class, I was reminded of a social psychology study that seemed related to her situation.  As you read the summary of the study below, you may wonder how this could be connected to ESL students working in groups.  Bear with me.

The study

The Psychology Department at Newcastle University conducted this interesting study using their coffee station.  There was a sign above the coffee station:

Smaller coffee station screenshot

As you can see, it operates on an honor system.  For the 10-week study, researchers taped a picture of flowers for a week over the coffee station and then switched to a picture of a pair of staring eyes for a week.  They continued to alternate these pictures each week.

This is where it gets interesting

During the weeks that the poster of the eyes was staring, coffee and tea drinkers contributed almost three times as much money as in the weeks that the flower picture was on the wall.  What’s so amazing is that it was just a PICTURE of eyes, not an actual person, which seemed to make people more honest.

The researchers conducted a similar study to see if the flowers or eyes pictures could motivate people to clean up after their meals.  In that study, the number of people who cleaned up doubled when the eye picture was present compared to when the flower picture was.

How this social psychological study is connected to teaching ESL

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