Giving feedback on writing (#ELTchat summary, 13/06/12)

Last night's ELT Chat was attended by TEFLers from all over the world - the UK, Canada, Greece, Israel, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Turkey, Brazil, and many more.

Most of the chat ended up being given over to how to correct students' writing, with not that much discussion of giving feedback more generally, though some interesting points did come up about focusing on the 'big picture' versus the 'nitty gritty', for example.

And so, without further ado, here's a digested version of the main issues discussed...


1. General feedback on/response to students' writing

Many chatters agreed that errors are not the only thing to give feedback on in students' writing - we also need to recognise what our students are doing well (e.g. good vocab use, good grammar, etc.), and how communicative and genuinely engaging their writing is.

The most important thing for @antoniaclare is to focus on the big picture (i.e. how well has the student conveyed the message, am I engaged as a reader, can I respond to it personally?), and feedback on content, before micro errors - @Marisa_C, @shaunwilden and @theteacherjames agreed!

Many chatters also agreed that class time, as well as homework time, should be dedicated to different stages in the process of writing - writing itself, reviewing, correcting, editing, re-drafting, and so on.


2. ...and more detailed feedback

@lauraahaha said that when she is the student, she likes all the time and effort she put into the writing to be recognised by the teacher in terms of detailed feedback (not just on the 'big picture).  @leoselivan agreed, noting that students also like feedback on the nitty gritty of their writing too, though, so this shouldn't be neglected. But he also noted that since becoming an IELTS examiner, he's focused more and more on the 'big picture' when marking students' writing.


3. Agreeing with students how their work will be marked

@lauraahaha suggested that the teacher should agree with students before the work is marked, or perhaps even written, what he/she is going to correct (e.g. only 5 mistakes, or only verb tenses). Similarly, @purple_steph suggested it's important to communicate the marking standards you'll be using to students. @louisealix68 also suggested that students could give each other feedback and re-draft their writing before the teacher sees it. And @theteacherjames said he gets students to create their own feedback criteria before writing a draft so they know what is expected, with @Marisa_C noting how surprisingly strict students can be with each other if they do this!

@Marisa_C mentioned Wilga Rivers' "percentages" for marking writing, e.g. 20% vocab, 20% grammar, 20% ideas, etc. (as in, you cannot deduct more than 20% or 30% of the total mark for bad grammar)


4. Using correction codes

@Marisa_C shared an amusing correction code

@leoselivan observed that it's difficult to use a marking code where you highlight every error AND focus on the big picture at same time. Using a marking code effectively encourages teachers to be a bit more 'petty', focusing on small details, he says.

@theteacherjames said one of his most useful projects in the past has been co-creating a school-wide correction code for all teachers to use. @lauraahaha didn't have such a good experience (one 'senior' teacher created a code which was then enforced on everybody) and suggested that the concept of "CO-creating" was important if this was to be successful. @purple_steph has also had trouble implementing this in her college.

Several chatters noted that consistency of code use between teachers does help if students are to work and progress long-term in their writing. @theteacherjames later said that he'd stopped using a correction code - students seem to get on fine without it. If they're just pointed towards an error, they can often work out what it is.


5. Using coloured pens to mark work

@David__Boughton asked how people felt about using red pen for correction. @Marisa_C said it doesn't have to be that scary, but conceded that most books argue against it. @leoselivan and @antoniaclare agreed that red pen isn't necessarily that harsh - and @shaunwilden observed that it's more the amount of colour on the page than what colour is used which might frighten students!

@stiiiv suggested teachers could use two colours - one for marking the good bits in students' writing, and another for marking the not-so-good (though @purple_steph and @esolcourses advised against red and green for this purpose, in case students are colour blind!). He also mentioned a colleague who uses different colours for different errors (e.g. green for grammar, red for vocab) to help students see patterns. @Marisa_C said she does this in Word - using different colour highlighting for different purposes.


6. Other tools and techniques for writing feedback

@singernick, @shaunwilden and @lauraahaha all talked about using screencasts as a means of giving students feedback. @lauraahaha shared a link to her blog post featuring an example of this. Several chatters mentioned how well students receive this - @Marisa_C says it adds the teacher's 'personal touch'. @antoniaclare shared a collection of links and thoughts about giving video feedback on written work here (by Russell Stannard).

@Noreen_Lam suggested teachers might highlight errors on the whiteboard without identifying which students' writing they came from, then let students peer correct. @stiiiv noted how this brings students together around the board - they work together with a real focus. @shaunwilden added that this could include putting things on the whiteboard that were GOOD, so students could learn from each other's strengths as well as their weaknesses.

@stiiiv mentioned a way of raising learners' awareness of common error patterns (possibly caused by L1) - get them to translate a short text into their L1, then translate it back without referring to the original, then explore the 'why' of the differences.

@harrisonmike mentioned a technique in which the teacher asks students to tell them something, then writes what they say verbatim on the whiteboard, and then learners edit this together. @samshep confirmed this is a "Language Experience Approach" taken from literacy teaching.

@Marisa_C suggested the converse of this activity (CLL-style) - the teacher asks students to read out what they've written, then repeats it back to them, correcting their errors.


7. Long-term learning from writing feedback

@Noreen_Lam mentioned a writing record sheet she uses on which students can record good language and frequent errors, for later reference. @lauraahaha also argued that it's important for students to keep a record of good language use and their common errors somewhere other than on one piece of written work itself, so they can refer back to it for later writing (something like keeping a vocabulary notebook for later study/reference).

@stiiiv similarly suggested getting learners to share the feedback they got on GOOD language use, pooling it all together into one class log for future use/reference.


8. What about working on writing with 1-2-1 students?

@marcosgazzana asked about getting 1-2-1 students to write (despite their not often wanting this, but preferring speaking practice) and how to give feedback, or coach them on this

@leoselivan suggested it's not worth forcing them if they don't want/need it, and @Noreen_Lam suggested if they do want/need it, it just becomes more collaborative between teacher and students, working through a piece of writing together and letting the student choose the final version.

@antoniaclare also suggested keeping pace and variety helps - doing lots of little writing activities with them throughout lessons.


9. What difference does teachers' feedback actually make? How else can students develop their writing?

@Marisa_C asked the $64,000,000 question(s): do students actually benefit from correction, and how much can they really assimilate? @lauraahaha said they only benefit from it insofar as they engage with it (not just read then ignore it, or blindly follow teachers' corrections), like with anything else; and @antoniaclare mentioned some SLA research that suggests students don't actually get as much as they feel they do from teachers' corrections!

@David__Boughton said that, regardless of what research may say, he sees that it helps his students. @lauraahaha countered that this is exactly why objective research is done, however - because we can't always trust our intuitions as teachers. @leoselivan suggested we google someone called Truscott, who's an active voice against error correction.

On a slight tangent - @antoniaclare noted that intuition is such an important part of a good teacher's toolkit. @lauraahaha mentioned a good book she's been reading recently about intuitive practice.

@marcosgazzana feels that students at lower levels can't necessarily spot errors, even if they're pointed in the right direction, but @theteacherjames and @shaunwilden countered that this is where the teacher comes in - to help them, guide them and train them to spot errors. @David__Boughton also noted that multilingual classes can surprise you with how many things they can spot.

@Marisa_C and @antoniaclare noted that exposure to written language is key in developing students' writing skills - students who go through intensive AND extensive reading programmes end up being better writers.


10. So, what can we conclude from all this?

@Marisa_C concluded from the chat that we need to experiment with different ways of giving feedback on students' writing, and potentially do some action research, including asking students themselves what they feel works for them.


11. Summary of links that were shared

• Links and thoughts about giving video feedback on written work (by Russell Stannard).
• @lauraahaha's blog post on a screencast she sent a student for writing feedback
• Voxopop and Voicethread (shared by @antoniaclare as free tools for giving feedback in which people can leave video, audio or text comments)
• Language Experience Approach to developing writing (thanks @samshep)
• An article on superficial error correction being ineffective (thanks @antoniaclare)
• And another one (thanks @antoniaclare again!)
• TEFLtastic's Alex Case talking about writing correction codes (thanks @harrisonmike)
• Book recommendation: The Intuitive Practitioner: On the Value of Not Always Knowing What One Is Doing (via @lauraahaha)

And... that's about it for this week's #ELTchat! See you at the next one...

Video feedback on written work

For a while I've been meaning to 'show and tell' an experiment I did with my students' written work.  Then a suggestion for this week's #ELTChat reminded me I still hadn't done it!  So here we go...

From eltpics, by @aClilToClimb

A few months back, I had an evening class of low-ish intermediate students who wanted to work on writing CVs and covering letters.  They all worked during the day (hence attending lessons in the evenings) and some were looking for new jobs (hence the desire to write cover letters!).

In class that week, we looked at jobs, discussed the personality traits required by certain jobs, role-played job interviews, read and created job listings, etc.  Then we looked at an example covering letter and analysed the format, the style, some typical expressions, etc.

Homework was to choose one of the [albeit slightly off-the-wall] job listings they'd created in-class and write a cover letter, applying for an interview for that post.  As these tend to be typed, they had to word-process their letters and email them to me.

Before long, I received this email from my student Virginia (who has kindly agreed to let me reproduce her work and my feedback on it in this blog post):

Hi Laura!!!
Please, find attached my cover letter. In the cover letter I am a superstar haha.
See you on wednesday!!
Have a nice day.
Virginia.


Her cover letter, applying for this "superstar" post, was attached to the email, and here's how it looked:

In normal circumstances, I would select 3 'best bits' and 3 'things to work on' (rather than picking up on every single little detail, which might be too overwhelming for both of us!) and email these back to the student, which I did:


Hi Virginia,

Here's your feedback: http://screencast.com/t/VJYHq2QT

And here's a written summary of my suggestions:

Good things
1. Starting and finishing (Dear Miss Garcia -- Yours sincerely) - just remember to spell it right! :)
2. Paragraphing and organisation of information, especially the last paragraph
3. Use of common phrases in cover letters like "I am writing in response to…", "I am available to start immediately" and "I look forward to hearing from you soon"

Things to revise
1. You could use relative clauses and participle clauses to combine sentences and make the grammar more complex:
    e.g. I am highly experienced, having been involved in the music world for over ten years. (participle clause)
    e.g. I have five discs, three of which were number ones in England. (relative clause)

Here's some information on relative clauses: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv286.shtml

And here's some on participle clauses: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv305.shtml

(Note: this is more advanced grammar! Your letter was very good for your level. These are just suggestions for improvement.)

2. Be aware of collocations like "difficult situations" and abbreviations that are different when translated, e.g. "NGOs" instead of "ONGs"

3. You might get an interview with this letter, but remember to proof-read (read again, checking for mistakes) your letter before sending it so you avoid little mistakes with spelling, etc.

Overall, good work! See you in the lesson tonight.

Laura


But of course this time, I was experimenting. So you may have noticed that link I gave her at the start of my email - it's a link to video feedback. In other words, as well as this email, I recorded my feedback on her letter. That is, I typed directly into her letter and used Jing to record both my computer screen as I was typing, plus my accompanying voice commentary.

And, without further ado, you can watch the video feedback here.
(Aside: please excuse the horns and sirens in the background... this is what happens when you record things in London!!)

When I sent her the above email, I didn't include my amended version of her letter. To improve it, she would need to work through it herself, following my tips or doing whatever else she saw fit.

What I liked about about the video feedback:

• I was able to highlight her strengths visually, just as I would highlight/underline them if I were using a pen on her handwritten work.
• I was also able to demonstrate how to make the changes I was suggesting.
• I also showed her some other resources she could consult if she wanted to study and improve on the areas of weakness I'd pointed out.
• It brings the suggestions to life - much better for people who need to see, hear and interact with new information, not just get feedback via one of these media.  So good for combining different learning styles/strategies.
• It's easy to save and refer back to at a later date, to compare other work with and review progress.
• Last, but certainly not least - my student loved it.

Now to be fair, there is one arguably not-so-good thing about this: you need to be comfortable with the technology involved.  But I really think the beauty of this system is that it's not actually that hard once you've tried it out once or twice.   If you have a computer with webcam and microphone, all you need is Jing (software for recording your screen - in part or whole - with audio from your microphone).

OK, so tell me how you do it!! (I hear you say.)

Jing is very simple to operate. What's more, the free version times you out after 5 minutes so you're forced to keep your feedback short and to-the-point!  And that really ought to be more than enough time taken up in our busy schedules for marking each student's written work from a typical class of 12-16 students.

You just need to:

1. have open and ready the things you want to record (in this case, I had my student's writing open in Word so I could edit it, plus the two weblinks I was going to share with her, so I could show her what they looked like and explain briefly which bits she should refer to).

2. then open Jing (obviously).

3. select "capture" from the Jing menu. A little crosshairs will appear, allowing you to select the part of your screen you want to record (you can see in my example that I only show the Microsoft Word window, not the rest of my computer screen).

4. click in the bottom left on the little button with a picture of a film strip on it ("Capture a video"). Jing will count down from 3 and tell you when to start speaking. As you speak and do stuff on your screen, it will just discreetly record everything.

5. click the stop button ("finish") in the bottom left when you're done. Jing will process what it just recorded (it's quite quick) and open up a video window in which you can play it back before sharing the final product.

6. give your video a name (again, type in the little box in the bottom left) and choose whether you want to save the video (by clicking on the little disk icon - you know where to find it) or upload it to the web (by clicking on the little icon featuring 3 arrows, called "Share via screencast.com").

I'd recommend sending your video to a web link (in which case Jing will tell you what that link is when it's done processing - it does it all automatically). You can always get the raw video file from Jing later if you want it, but it saves as a big Flash file, which isn't ideal for sharing.

Oh, and one caveat at this point - watching the videos back on iPads or iPhones is a no-go (since Apple hates all things Flash). But you can watch them fine on computers.

So that's it! Happy experimenting... get in touch if you have any questions or comments.


P.S. Incidentally, in this experimental video I also was playing around a bit with a spotlight tool called Mouseposé (for Mac - not sure what's available for PCs), so that's not a part of Jing and to be honest, probably not really necessary. I'd just downloaded it and was just trying it out.


UPDATE, 13/7/12: Just discovered an interesting recent article about using Jing for feedback like this.  Thanks to @teacherphili for sharing it with me (and to @russell1955 for having shared it with him!).  Thanks also to @russell1955 for sharing another article (of his) from 2006 on this same topic.