Helping Students ‘Hear’ and Using Your Comments

    

When it comes to teachers giving feedback on the students’ writing, a great advice matters a lot. This is particularly important in college or university degree programs where students are assigned a number of writing projects throughout their tenure, and giving appropriate feedback is critical to their success both in and out of the classroom.  

To be more effective and efficient, teachers sometimes adopt a grading rubric, selecting minimal marking for errors, or provide remarks only on a few focused areas.  

Despite the attempt of providing the perfect set of comments on the essay submitted by the students, you can still fail to “create a sound”, or throw an impact by your feedback to help them improve their writing. Often times we see students collecting back their essays, only to glance at the paper for a second before throwing it in the bin after leaving the room. In short, responding to students’ submissions is an intensely frustrating experience that has no influence on the improvement of their writing skills at all.  

On the other hand, becoming a master academic writer is one of the most daunting and challenging task at college level, and the teacher’s comment for improvement can go a long way in accomplishing that goal. Here are some fundamental tips that teachers should use to help learners ‘hear’ in the class through their feedback. 

Adjust the timing 

It makes sense to provide more feedback early during the writing process, however, it is equally difficult as well. The initial draft catch the most attention and feedback, while the final submission gets very little feedback, however, the final draft has a grade that requires genuine defending.  

Teachers normally provide feedback early in the semester, however, the more complex, important essays carrying higher grade-weight are always kept for the end. To help everyone adjust, teachers should inform students what they are doing and why. You can use an instructional checklist of vital features to quickly defend the final grade without worrying about commenting on all the features. The technique helps teachers to shift instead of spending their time on commenting.  

Ask students to give responses

You can even categorize the responses you wish to acquire from the students. After handing back the paper to the students, ask them to write a comment they understood, one that they didn’t expect, and the one they are rather unclear about. You can either respond to the gathered responses, or take the responses as a write-to-learn activity and don’t gather them, although you can allow students to take some time and compare their paper with a partner. From a student’s perspective, this exercise is all about going through the reposes with the teacher or their fellow classmates and pondering over their performance.  

Aid students to become revisers

Simply reading the teacher’s feedback doesn’t necessarily and amply guarantee the needed inspiration and motivation for the students. To motivate a richer learning, in your draft-and-revise essay place apart a minor percentage of the final grade specifically for “important revision”, an exercise taken to define your students. For instance, you can examine this quickly by looking early and then paper drafts in a folder. You can even ask students to enable “Track Changes” in the online Word document. When running low on time, ask for a revision memo instead where in a couple of paragraphs, students locate important changes they can do in a currently graded paper, while adding specific examples.  

At other times, teachers may allot a separate class time for students to practice the revision technique like elaboration. For example, “see your previous drafts, find an area where I required more explanations and write three sentence that should help. Share those with a classmate”.  

Asking for relevant responses is not only done by the teachers, but other academic professionals such as UK Essay Writing service providers too. The point is to know what ticks the students towards clear comprehension and a richer learning experience.