Responding, Correcting, Guiding

RESPONDING, CORRECTING, AND GUIDING

by

Jeremy Harmer

To Fulfill the task of Teaching Writing

Lecturer: Dr. Enny Irawati, M.Pd

By

Moh. Fahrudin NIM:100221509480

Agus Mujianto NIM 10022150948

STATE UNIVERSITY OF MALANG

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

JUNE 2012

RESPONDING, CORRECTING, AND GUIDING

There are six parts in this chapter:

A.    A ways of reacting to students’ writing

B.     A ways of correcting students’ work

C.     A ways of responding to students’ work

D.    Peer writing

E.     Training students to self- edit and self-correct

F.      Making homework successful

A.  Ways of reacting to students’ writing

The ways we want to we react to students’ work will depend on the kind of task and what we want to achieve at any point

1.      Responding and correcting

Responding to students’ work concerned with accuracy of their performance and the content and design on their writing. For example; why did you start with story about the bus that was late? You should have begun, instead, with the problem of public transport in general?

Correcting relates we indicate something is not right. We correct mistake in the students’ written performance on syntax, concord, collocation. In a process-writing, the teachers’ intervention is to help students edit and move forward to a new draft, responding is often more appropriate than correcting. The teachers ask questions, make suggestions, give feedback.

2.      The roles of teacher

Teachers play different roles when they give feedback they are called examiner, when they respond the students’ ideas and perceptions, the teachers become audience. They are called assistant when they help the students. The teachers also become resource, evaluator and editor.

3.      Who responds?

We can also encourage students to look at each others’ work, give advice and make suggestions about how it could be improved. Students become their colleagues’ audience and sometimes their evaluator.

4.      What students do?

Responding to the students’ work make students do something with the feedback-encouragement that spurs on. Good correction methods include ensuring that students understand what the mistakes and how they can be corrected   

B.     Ways of Correcting Students’ Work

            The most common way of correcting students’ work is to return it to the students with a greatdeal of underlining, crossing-out, question marks, and the occasional tick.

1.      Selective correction

It is for avoiding the proliferation of red ink all over a student’s work. We could correct only verb tenses or punctuation or word order. If we employ a selective approach, students must know about it. So, they only concentrate on a specific part.

2.      Using marking scales

Teacher use a range of different marking scales when correcting written work or written tests. It means students who fall in grammar, they may be good in vocabulary.

3.      Using correction symbols

Symbol	Meaning	Example
S	A spelling error	The answer is obvius
WO	A mistake in word order	I like very much it
G	A grammar mistake	I will buy some furnitures
T	Wrong verb tense	I have seen him yesterday
C	Concord mistake (e.g. verb agreement)	People is angry
L	Something has been left out	He told that he was sorry
WW	Wrong word	I am interested on jazz
{    }	Something is not necessary	He was not too strong enough
PM	The meaning is unclear	That is very excited photograph
P	A punctuation mistake	Do you like London
F/I	Too formal or informal	Hi, Mr. Franklin. Thank you for you help

  

4.      Reformulation

It is a way of showing students how they could write something more correctly. Reformulation is useful in drafting and re-drafting.

5.      Referring students to a dictionary or a grammar book

6.      Ask me. Teacher can sort the students’ problem face-to face.

7.      Remedial teaching.

C.    Ways of Responding Students’ work

1.      Responding to work-in-progress

Teacher will often visit students in writing class and talk them about what they are writing. Teacher has to think carefully about the way teacher give advices or duggestions.

2.      Responding by written comment.

3.      Post-task statements. Teachers usually ends up writing class with final comments.

4.      Taped comments. Teacher can tape their comments about student writing on tapes provided by students.

5.      Electronic comments, such as via e-mail, face book, or twitter.

D.    Peer Review

It is an important element in writing process that encourage students to work

collaboratively. It helps students to view both colleagues and teachers as collaborator rather than evaluators. Students need guidance from their teacher so they know what to look at when they read their classmates’ work.

Peer Review develops the students’ ability in editing and revising process.

Some problems of peer review

1. Some students may resent the teacher’s approval. Valuing their colleagues’ opinion much less than their teacher’s.

2. Not all students work well together, it depends on the reviewer.

3. Students are not focused on the task

E.     Training Students to Self-edit and Self-correct

1.       Finding mistakes by putting  incorrect sentences up to the board

2.       Understanding correction symbols.

Stage 1. The teacher explains that the class is going to look at symbols which indicate mistakes. Stage 2. The teacher can copy a piece of student work onto the board. Stage 3. The teacher haEnds the students some incorrect sentences with symbols included, and the students have to identify thr type of mistake.

3.       Removing symbols gradually.

Stage 1. Lines and symbols

Stage 2. Underlining with no symbol

Stage 3. Margin symbol

Stage 4. Margin marks

Stage 5. One margin mark

4.       Making corrections. When students homework are given back, their errors have been highlighted, it is a good idea if the students given time in class to rewrite the material correctly

5.       Error checklist.

6.       Directed questions.

7.       Discussing writing.

F.     Making Homework Successful

Discussing Homework issues, includes:

1.      Why homework? What homework is useful for?

2.      Homework Load, there is no point in setting homework that students won’t or can’t do because of their other commitments.

3.      Appropriate homework task..

4.      Explain the marking criteria. If we tell the students that we are going to look at text organization in particular, the students will spend more time on text organization

5.      Punctuality, and even handedness