Teaching Techniques: Audiovisual Feedback in EFL/ESL Writing Classes
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As an English teacher preparing students for university-level work in academic English, I have spent many hours poring over essays, red pen in hand. The process of reading and correcting was always time intensive and grueling, and the results were usually as disheartening for me as they were discouraging for the emerging writers who composed the essays. Not only that, but the same problems would reappear later, the whole demoralizing process repeated through the draft, feedback, and revision process, assignment after assignment.
In my search for a better way, I have tried most of the standard techniques to give effective feedback to my students while decreasing the amount of time spent writing such feedback. Whether handwritten or submitted electronically, the waves of essays kept coming, multiplied by regular increases in class size, and I sought any technique or innovation that would allow me to fit my family life into the troughs between the peaks. I used rubrics and handouts of abbreviations and proofreading symbols, some standard, some of my own invention. I created an array of Microsoft Word macros that I could access with the press of a key to insert such feedback as “This is a comma splice. A comma splice is when you connect two independent clauses using a comma, and it can be corrected in several ways. See page XX in your textbook for further information.” Finally, I went minimalist and only circled or highlighted areas that needed attention, requiring students to visit me during office hours or consult with me during class time when they couldn’t figure out their errors. Usually though, if students couldn’t correct their mistakes on their own or by asking me in class, they would take a random stab at correcting their mistakes, not having the time or desire to make a special trip to visit me during office hours for an explanation. However, during the moments I spent with the few who did come to visit me for face-to-face feedback, I felt like I made the biggest impact, and both the quantity of the feedback and the quality of the experience were incomparably superior to those of any written feedback I had ever given. Not only that, but I was able to deliver better feedback in much less time than it would have taken to write it. I wished that there were a way to deliver that experience to all my students. That’s when I discovered Jing.
Author:
William J. Woodard
Downloadable Resources
| File | Format | Size | Download |
|---|---|---|---|
| etf_54_2_pg29-32.pdf | 226.07kb | Download |
English Teaching Forum 2016, Volume 54, Number 2
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