TESTING WRITING

Giving feedback
on writing
Hung Hoang Le offers some ideas on giving positive help to learners.

I ELTS is now one of the most popular

exams with millions of people taking
it every year for different purposes.
Understandably, teachers will focus
on areas such as test-taking strategies
and skills development, for example
uncommon to see that students will
attempt to write an essay before
submitting it to the teachers, who
It is one way for English learners to genre knowledge in the case of IELTS will then try to give comments on the
show how well they can perform in an writing, at the expense of language learners’ essays. To a lot of teachers’
English-speaking environment. IELTS development. It is quite common that frustration, students rarely look at
tests students on four skills: Reading, learners might be very much aware of what the teachers have to say – putting
Speaking, Writing and Listening. From the position and the function of a topic the essay right into their school bags
my teaching experience as an IELTS sentence because the teacher has been without a second thought.
teacher for the last five years, writing elaborating on it very carefully. Learners
is often identified as one of the most might have also had a chance to notice
challenging areas to teach and to learn topic sentences in a number of essays.
Corrective feedback –
because of the following reasons. However, when it comes to producing
one of the solutions to
one, they lack the vocabulary and the different problems in
grammar to do what they want to do. IELTS writing
Problems in the teaching I believe that the teacher’s feedback
and learning of writing Finally, the teacher’s feedback might has a significant impact on learners’
The first hurdle facing learners is not be exploited to help students motivation, language and skill
motivation, that is, they do not see develop their writing skills. It is not development. Teachers need to be
how well they have progressed in
writing. Understandably, learners
Six categories of corrective feedback can be classified
will lose motivation if it is difficult for
them to see if they have made any Direct The error is identified, and the correct form is provided.
progress. When giving feedback, there feedback
is a tendency for language teachers to
focus on areas that need developing Indirect The error is indicated, but correction is not provided.
without sufficient attention to another feedback
function of feedback: encouragement
Metalinguistic The teacher provides students with metalinguistic clues such
or positive reinforcement. as Wrong Word Order, Wrong Word Use. He/she also can
feedback
do this by using error codes or a numbering system of the
Another issue in some exam classes errors followed by a brief grammatical description of these
is an imbalance when it comes to errors.
skills development and language The focus of Focused feedback: intensive, focusing on one or two types of
development. I cannot emphasise feedback.
feedback
enough the importance of a thorough, Unfocused feedback: extensive, focusing on different types
well-informed focus on both areas, of errors that students make, e.g. grammar, vocabulary,
depending on our teaching context style, etc.
and students. Some teachers I know Electronic The teacher indicates the errors and then also provides a
might even think that exam classes hyperlink to the source where the solution can be found.
feedback
are not the place to revisit teaching
grammar or vocabulary, which they Reformulation The teacher rephrases what learners have to write, trying to
keep their opinions but providing a better model of language.
believe should have been taught and
learned thoroughly in previous courses. Table 1

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 TESTING WRITING

aware of a range of ways that they can

give feedback.

According to Ellis (2008: 98), corrective

feedback can be classified into six
categories (see Table 1).

In the context of exam classes, where

there should be a balance of skills and
language development as mentioned
above, I suggest that teachers’ feedback
can also be divided into skills-focused
or language-focused. With this in mind,
teachers should be in a better position
toprovide a more well-balanced guide
to improve learners’ writing skills.
Such awareness of different types of
corrective feedback on the teacher’s
part will expand their repertoire when
giving corrective feedback so that
they can use the ones that they deem
appropriate in their teaching context
and for their learners.

For our feedback to become truly

How you would How the teacher
meaningful, we need to raise learners’ What you wrote
awareness of the importance of feedback
improve would write
in their writing development. In the
beginning, we should take on the role of
task designers to give students plenty of
opportunities to act on our feedback to
improve their writing. Teachers’ feedback
is only meaningful if it is acknowledged
by learners. Ellis (2008) supports this idea
by saying that feedback can only have an
impact if students attend to it.

Activities with corrective

feedback
Auctioning
Aim: to give students a chance to work
on teacher’s feedback engagingly.
Table 2
Procedure: Auctioning is a popular
game that will jazz up any class. The
format of the game is interesting, and Procedure: The teacher collects some
procedure is clearly explained by
the post-activity feedback gets students sentences that need to be improved.
Lavery (n.d). The difference here is that
to improve sentences with errors. With Those sentences can contain some
the teacher will include both good and
well-written sentences, learners have a mistakes, or they are correctly written
bad models of writing taken from the
chance to learn from them. The teacher but would benefit from a more
learners’ own writing texts for the game.
here can praise learners who produced advanced grammatical structure or
In the feedback session at the end, the
such sentences. vocabulary item. Get the students in
teacher should elicit from learners both
pairs or groups to read the sentences
the positive and negative features of the What the teacher would write
and decide for themselves how they
sentences/paragraphs in the game. (see Table 2)
would improve those sentences. After
Aim: To upgrade learners’ written some time, the teacher asks students
Value: The activity draws students’
language. to unfold the paper to check what the
attention to their writing product. The

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 TESTING WRITING

Abbreviation Examples Classification Procedure: Focuses learners’ attention

on different areas that they often have
WW (Wrong word) The chart below gives
difficulty with. For example, use of
information on the
global sale tenses, cohesive devices, use of articles,
etc. Before the students write an essay,
WT (Wrong Time) In 2006, the sales in ask them to think about areas that they
Japan stand at 50
think they will most need help with.
X (Extra word) However, the sales Instruct learners to write a sentence on
in other country the top of their essay that they want you
experienced much to focus on.
higher increase at all,
P (Punctuation) US saw a small increase Value: Learners should be provided a
when it peaked at 350 choice in their learning. The teacher’s
in 2007, however, US
feedback will be more likely to get more
declined to almost 300
attention from learners if they have a
SP (Spelling) the global sale os the say in it. Students should also be aware
hybrid vehicles of what they most need help with when
Table 3 (adapted from Kaye, n.d.) they actually sit down and write.

teacher has written. They would then Classification gives students a chance
be given a chance to compare with to recognise those mistakes, and
Conclusion
their version. learners are invited to try correcting the Teacher’s feedback is a powerful tool
mistakes themselves. in the learners’ skills and language
Value: The activity also focuses on development. The teacher should be
upgrading learners’ written language. Well-written or not? aware of and make use of a range
Learners can work collaboratively to of feedback-giving techniques to
Aim: To focus not only on students’
improve their written products before suit their learners’ preferences and
mistakes but also on their well-written
checking the teacher’s reformulated teaching context.
products, which is likely to increase
feedback. The comparison that learners
their motivation.
make between their corrected version
and that of the teacher will get their
References
Procedure: The teacher collects several Ellis R (2008) A typology of written corrective
attention on the teacher’s feedback.
sentences from learners’ writing, both feedback types. ELT Journal 63 (2) 97–101.
well-written and not so well-written.
Metalinguistic feedback Lavery C. (n.d.) Grammar auction [online].
Mix them up, and students classify Available at: https://www.teachingenglish.org.
(see Table 3)
them into categories of ‘well-written’ uk/article/grammar-auction.
Aim: To familiarise learners with the use and ‘needs to improve’. Some students
Kaye P (n.d.) Written correction code
of metalinguistic feedback and facilitate might be sensitive if they realise that [online]. Available at: https://www.
self-correction. their sentences are listed as ‘needs to teachingenglish.org.uk/article/writing-
improve’; the teacher should change correction-code.
Procedure: The teacher chooses those sentences a bit for those students
some metalinguistic abbreviations to so that they do not take it so personally.
introduce to the learners one at a time. In the whole class feedback session, the
Under each criterion, there should be an teacher might want to praise learners’
example of such mistakes taken from the with well-written sentences – prioritising
learners’ essays. Learners are then given learners who might struggle in their class.
a number of sentences with different
mistakes that the teacher wants to focus Value: The input is from the learners, and
on. They work in groups to classify they are exposed to both good and bad
them into different categories. After the models of written language. Meaningful Hung Hoang Le has been teaching
English for the past five years. He
learners have finished classification, the praise from the teacher will have a
works with different types of learners
teacher should ask for the reasons. As positive impact on learners’ motivation. in different teaching contexts. However,
an extended task, learners should work he has worked mostly with students
collaboratively to correct those mistakes. Personalised corrective who are preparing to take the IELTS
test. He has a CELTA, Delta modules 1,
feedback 3, with the result of module 2 coming
Value: The activity draws learners’ in August. He is interested in Second
Aim: To give students a choice in what
attention to different metalinguistic Language Acquisition, Exam Classes and
areas they would like the teacher to Differentiation Techniques in ELT.
terms and abbreviations that the
focus on.
teacher might use in the future.

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