Correction and Giving Feedback

• Train your students to use a checklist for content. When checking their answer at the end they should be sure to carefully re-read their answer to check that 1) they have addressed the task fully and no important details are missing 2) that their ideas are well-organised with sufficient supporting evidence and 3) that their writing communicates well.
• Think about where, when and how you will give feedback on accuracy to your students. If you cannot discuss their mistakes individually, you could make written comments and give general feedback to the class. If you have a large class, it may help to adopt a marking scheme, though you will need to make sure you explain this to your students.
• Students often make the same mistakes. One way to deal with this is to highlight the mistakes which are often repeated in a particular colour. Do not correct them. When the essays are handed back, your students should count up how many of these mistakes there are and keep a record, they should aim to reduce this number as much as possible throughout your course. Point out to your students that these mistakes are the careless mistakes that they should be checking for in the last few minutes of the exam.
• When they have completed an essay in class, ask your students to swap with a partner and ask them to check for common mistakes. It is often easier to spot mistakes in someone else’s writing.
• Vary the focus of your correction to teach your students that factors other than grammatical accuracy are important. In your feedback, you should make sure to include comments on: the use of arguments, ideas and evidence; planning and organisation; coherence and cohesion; communicative quality; task completion.
• If your class size is very large, it may be helpful to get your students to write on paper which is pre-printed with a feedback section at the end such as the following:
  
  

  Task Completion	Good use of:	Areas to improve next time:

• Make sure that you focus on the positive aspects of their writing as well as areas that need to be improved.