Assessment and Corrective Feedback in Grammar Writing

Over this week, I have been thinking about all the types of assessment I have received of my writing over the many years of my schooling and career.  When I finished high school, I thought I was a fairly good writer.  However, at university I learned I had much more to learn, and I have continued to learn and sometimes think I have also regressed.  Fortunately, I have had many good writing mentors who have been very patient with corrections and guidance to help me improve.  Therefore, I feel an obligation to ensure that I am a very good example, and also have a very positive influence on the writing skills of my ESL students.  So how do I do that?

First, it is helpful to understand why students make certain errors.  Is it just part of the learning process (developmental errors), or are there other reasons.  In ESL the main reason is L1 interference (Harmer 2001), so understanding the contributions of their L1 for each individual can help to focus on they why, and work toward a correction.  For example, some languages do not have pronouns, or the same verb tenses. Some lack prepositions altogether.

There are several types of methods for corrective feedback and it seems that there is still much discussion amount scholars on what is best (Ellis 2008).  I believe that the method will varying depending on the context.  I also do not think that one method has to exclude another. The direct method give explicit guidance on error correction, while indirect methods tells the student there is an error but asks the student to correct it.  I would suggest that for some things that students should easily self-correct such as punctuation and spelling, an indirect method would be fine.  For more complicated grammar that students might not necessarily know, a more direct approach would be good.  Coding, using editing markings, is another approach.  However, students must learn the code (Harmer 2001).  Simpler versions of code can be used for lower level students.

However, I also remember the frustration of having to do all the corrections, with many rewrites sometimes. I think we have to keep this in mind with our learners, in that we have to encourage learning while trying not to increase frustration with their errors. This is why some suggest that we focus the error correction (Ellis 2008; Harmer 2001) to highlight a particular grammar feature to avoid over correction.

 I've noticed that some students take error correction in stride, while others get somewhat defensive, and some just don't want to be bothered much.  There is a whole range. And I think there are a number of factors which contribute to this (personality, L1 learning situation, motivation, etc).  Teachers need to be sensitive to their students, and act and react to the individual learner regarding error correction, because each will be different. Research does suggest that the teacher must give sincere individualized comments of constructive criticism for the student to improve (Harmer 2001).   Positive and negative comments must be balanced, appropriate, and foster improvement to be effective.

I think teachers can also be proactive in writing to ensure students are assessing their own work prior to handing it in. One thing I saw a teacher do, is to give students their own correction list prior to the writing exercise.  It was simple, such as 1) capital 2) periods 3) subject and verb, etc.  This reminded the students as they were writing, and then to check again when finished, helping with self-correction.  A simple reminder will often go a long way to improve outcomes.

Ellis, R. (2009, April). A typology of written corrective feedback types. ELT Journal, 63(2), 97-107.

Harmer, J. (2004). The practice of English language teaching. Essex, UK: Pearson Education
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