Writing:

Captioning -- Martin, April 24, 1998

When working on creative writing with my special education students, I will often pull from a file of newspaper or magazine pictures and have the students write captions, serious or humorous ones.

For oral language and communication skills, they may also sit back to back and one person describes the picture for the other person to sketch. This can be humorous if you make it a contest for the most accurate drawing.

Student journals -- Linell Davis, January 22, 1999

Reasons for asking students to write Engliish journals

* Fluency practice
It helps to get the words flowing. You can't work on improving their writing until they produce words and sentences. The more the better. This is about quantity.

* Source of ideas
A journal entry might hold an idea for an essay or other more formal writing.

* Non-threatening
Because you define it as informal writing, students are less afraid of making mistakes. Because they are more relaxed and have fewer fixed ideas about what a journal should be, they often write better in their journals than in formal essays.

* Audience and argument
Students learn that they can actually communicate in writing. They have readers and the readers have opinions! They learn to give reasons for their opinions.

* Self-expression
Students write about what interests them instead of assigned topics. This is motivating.

* Practicing English
Students can practice using new words and expressions they learn in other courses.

* Information
Students will tell you what they like and dislike and what is on their minds generally in their journals. This helps you to know them and teach them better.

Types of journals

* Personal journal
Each student keeps his or her own journal notebook. Ask them to write 2-5 entries a week. Minimum 10 lines to one page for each entry depending on their English level. Occasionally they will claim to have nothing to write about. Then it is time for brainstorming ideas in class.

* Group journal
Groups of four or five students keep a journal notebook in which they discuss topics with each other. I ask them to form groups with people they do not know well (no roommates!) because then they really have something to say. One person starts the notebook each week and is responsible for choosing the topic. After writing about one page, pass it on to the next person who must respond to what the first person has written. Continue until all group members have responded. Hand in during next class.

* Special journals
If all your students have a particular need or interest you can restrict the journal to a specific purpose -- a career planning journal, a reading journal, a creative writing journal, a film viewing journal, etc.

Responding to journals

* Don't grade them,
otherwise you will arouse their anxiety. I give them checkmarks. This means they have completed the assignment. A check minus means they didn't respond as expected (too few words, too mechanical, maybe copied from somewhere else). A check plus means they responded better than expected (lots of words, good thinking, creative, well-expressed, observant, etc.).

* Comment on the content
This tells the students that you got the message and have something to say about it.

* Don't correct grammar
If the student seems to searching for a word, I will provide it, but this is freewriting and they should be focusing on expression rather than accuracy. Also you don't have time for so much correcting.

* For group journals
Give the writing groups class time at least twice a semester to review their work and make plans for their future journal writing.

* Respond to the whole class
Occasionally I give a feedback session on common errors I notice they are making in their journals. I also make a point of telling them as a class what I like about their journal writing.

* Use what you learn about the students' interests
and concerns to invent motivating class activities. Once I noticed that many of them were writing about love, so I made up a handout on "Words of Love."

* At the end of the term
ask students to review their journals and write an entry about how they have improved their writing and about their goals and plans for future improvements.

Peer evaluation in writing -- Linell Davis, July 7, 1999

I also use peer evaluation and editing when I teach writing. I really had no choice about it, because my undergraduate writing classes grew from 16 students each to 30 students each and I was teaching two classes a semester. There is no way to give good feedback on sixty essays week after week. I had to teach the students how to help each other with their writing.

The writing textbook I use, Organizing an Essay published by Nanjing University Press, emphasizes peer editing. When students are planning an essay, they are encouraged to discuss their ideas with one or two classmates to get feedback from them. Then when they finish their first draft, they exchange papers with classmates for peer editing. After that they write a second draft.

For peer editing I teach the students to pay attention to purpose and audience first. Is the purpose clear? Who is the intended audience? Is the essay appropriate for the intended audience? Will the intended readers find it interesting, attractive, informative?

Then they go on to issues of organization. Is the essay well-organized? Introduction, conclusion, development of the topic? Is there a strong controlling idea or thesis that provides a focus for all the facts/ideas in the essay? Are the paragraphs well-organized. Is there a topic for each paragraph? Is there sufficient concrete detail? Are the author's assertions supported by evidence?

The final item to pay attention to is language. Is the English expression idiomatic? Is it grammatically correct? Does the author need to improve word choice, sentence structure, etc? I tell the students not to spend much time correcting language errors on the first draft. The students will revise their essays, so the sentences they could correct will probably be changed.

When students finish reading their classmates' essays, they write a note to the author using the Praise-Question-Polish format:

1. Praise what you appreciate about the essay. It could be topic, language, humor, introduction or anything else you think is praiseworthy.

2. Question: Ask the author questions to help him/her think about the essay again. For instance, "how do you know?" is a question that will encourage the author to give evidence for a claim. "Who do you want to read this?" will encourage the author to think about audience?

3. Polish: Make suggestions for improving the essay.

Sometimes the editors exchange their views with authors orally. After a couple of months of this I sensed the students were getting tired of the routine, so I tried a few crazy ideas for peer editing. Once I made up names for 3 magazines and told the students to submit their essays to one of them. Then students formed editorial committees to choose a few of the essays to be published in each magazine. After they chose the essays they told the class why they had chosen those particular essays. That is, they had to say what was good about them.

Another time I had an essay clinic. Students submitted their essays to one of the clinics according to what "illness" they thought their essay might have. The design clinic was for essays with weak topics, purpose, uncertain audience, etc. Then we had a structure clinic, development clinic, and language clinic. The doctors in each clinic wrote "prescriptions" for the essays they read and referred them to other clinics as needed.

After peer editing the students hand in their essays. I make additional comments, but sometimes I only need to say "follow the advice of your peer editor." Then I hand back the essays and the students revise them. Reading the revisions is much less time consuming than reading the first drafts. I just have to see if the student successfully solved the problems in the first draft. After peer editing sessions some students will ask if they can revise before I read their drafts. I always give them permission. After all the objective is get them to take more responsibility for their writing and asking for a chance to revise is a sign that they are doing that.

Mike says he is stil analyzing the results of his work on peer evaluation. I have not been as systematic as he has been in assessing the results, but it is my impression that looking at another person's writing analytically helps students look at their own writing analytically. At the same time it is easier to be objective about someone else's writing than about your own. The students also learn that writing is a public act. Someone other than the teacher will read what they write. This helps them to pay attention to the issue of audience and to anticipate readers' responses when they write. They work harder because they do not want to be embarrassed in front of their peers.

Linell