Feedback on writing tasks in large classes

This post stems from a conversation I had with my colleague over a pint a few months ago. We were talking about ways of giving feedback on students' writing that are considered sufficient for large classes.

When teachers have a small class of learners to work with, it is relatively easy to give each individual detailed feedback. Some teachers use correction codes, whereas others may provide comments along the lines of 'good points' and 'things to work on'.

In large classes, however, this approach is time-consuming at best and impractical at worst. What I usually do is to read through each student's written work first - it usually takes me a minute or two to read a 250-word essay or article. This gives me a brief idea of a student's strengths and weaknesses. Then I spend another few minutes or so writing my overall comments. In a class of 15 students, it usually takes less than two hours.

To deal with language errors, I select sentences from various students' written work - both good examples and sentences with errors - and compile them in a single Word document. In the next lesson, my students discuss these sentences; they often recognise their own writing! This discussion task is a form of delayed error correction with peer correction in the feedback stage.

TEYLT Worldwide (Issue 1, 2024)

Here is a short text I've written for the latest IATEFL YLTSIG publication, TEYLT Worldwide. It is a subscriber-only publication (ISSN: 2520-2596). In my text, I recounted and reflected on my experience of using ChatGPT in a writing skills lesson.

I've personally found the following articles very useful:

• Adrienn Szlapak's one on the use of first language (L1) in the primary classroom use - I've been trying to learn more about English as an Additional Language (EAL). In her article, Adrienn explains what EAL entails in a clear, detailed manner.
  
• Annie Altamirano's one on differentiated instruction - I've learnt some concrete ideas for using differentiation in the classroom. Annie shares her experience with lots of hands-on ideas.
  

 

Using ChatGPT in a Writing lesson

Since the birth of the likes of ChatGPT, I've heard many teaching colleagues say that they worry about their students' cheating behaviour in their Writing homework. My solution to this is simple: whenever I meet a new group of learners, I always ask my students to do Writing in the classroom. This enables me to get to know their true ability to write in English, so that I can detect any anomaly later on. In fact, I did have an 18-year-old teenage learner who handed in an (almost) error-free essay in the middle of the year. He eventually admitted that his girlfriend had written it, and I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt on that single occasion.

What about mentioning the elephant in the room? That was what I did last Tuesday. I was teaching a small class of teenagers at Upper-Intermediate level (B2). The lesson was on writing a discursive, or agree-disagree, essay.

After the usual brainstorming, drafting and writing stages, I showed my students the same essay written by ChatGPT. My prompt to the AI programme was:

Can you please* write a 140- to 190-word essay at CEFR level B2? The essay title is 'Being successful in life depends more on a person's ability than on how hard a person tries. Do you agree?' The essay should include these ideas: studies, sport, and your own idea.

* Since ChatGPT is said to be a language model, I insisted on teaching it proper manners!

What my students and I did with the ChatGPT-generated essay was analyse its content. I guided my students on identifying the shortcomings of ChatGPT:

1. The word limit was not respected. ChatGPT gave us a 230-word essay.

2. Both introductory and concluding paragraphs lack coherence. The introduction begins with a sentence about the background topic of 'success'; however, this is followed by a mechanical sentence that goes along the lines of 'this essay will explore the following ideas: studies, sport, and ...' ChatGPT obviously repeated part of my prompt. The concluding paragraph is way off the mark - ChatGPT made no attempt to address the task statement or give a final opinion.

3. Some supporting examples aren't specific enough. For example, ChatGPT mentioned 'ability' when discussing sport but without exemplifying the specific kind of ability.

Ideas for teaching Writing skills

Here are some ideas for teaching Writing which I've tried this month - by deconstructing the process of writing, rather than consulting empirical research.

 

FCE Writing (Part 1)

The issues which my students were facing included 1) the lack of a central idea and 2) the lack of development in each paragraph.

First, we established a template structure (as below):

Introdcution

Paragraph #1 (idea: ___)

• statement:
• supporting reason/example:
• consequence/result:
• summary (paraphrasing/mirroring the statement):

Paragraph #2 (idea: ___)

Paragraph #3 (idea: ___)

Conclusion

 

Then, the students brainstorm ideas collaboratively. (Each bullet point represents a single sentence.)

Once they have finished brainstorming, what the students need to do is turn each bullet point into a full sentence.

Formal and informal emails

As an extension, I asked my Business English students to come up with 'less formal' and 'more formal' equivalents of what they had written.

• Feel free to get in touch for more information.
• Please let me know if you need any further information. (semi-formal)
• Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require any further information. (formal)

This allowed my students to practise choosing vocabulary appropriate to the tenor (relationship between the sender and the recipient). They could also build up a bank of expressions in both styles.