By Diana Hamilton
This year, we’ve been focusing our work on identifying and developing teaching strategies that facilitate language acquisition. Deepti Dhir, our Multilingual Writing Support Specialist, has been looking specifically at the ways we respond to student writing, drawing on TESOL scholarship that encourages:
- Presenting language in larger fixed chunks, or lexical units
- Finding more opportunities to expose students to new language
- Giving students a variety of options to chose from
- Providing sentence frames and/or templates, and
- Negotiating meaning in one-to-one interactions.
In this post, I want to highlight a few ways these strategies bear out when providing written feedback. In synchronous interactions, we can ask writers for clarification or pose guiding questions that help them determine their own meaning—i.e., there’s more room for negotiation. In the writer’s absence, rhetorical questions can feel more evasive (or downright confusing), and there’s no way to check for understanding. Consultants sometimes resist providing options or model language in written feedback, afraid they’ll step into the role of editor rather than teacher or supportive ear.
Here are few models of Deepti’s written responses:
- Student request: “How to write a professional cover letter”
In this request for written feedback, the writer knew what belonged in a cover letter, but was having a hard time phrasing some of that information. Deepti demystified the process by letting him know a few common phrases for this work:
Deepti’s feedback:
“[J.], you have the right idea here. You know what information to include in the introduction of a cover letter. I want to teach you some helpful phrases/sentence structures that we normally use in an introduction:
I am writing to express my interest in the position of ___________
OR I am writing to apply for the position of ____________ at [name of company].”
Later, the student writes that he “likes risk and stock market analysis.” Deepti suggests a phrase stronger than “likes”:
“I have expertise in ____ and ______.
I particularly enjoy performing _______ and ________ analysis.
I have strong / extensive experience in ________.”
In both examples, the student learns a sentence structure that can be adopted for a variety of cover letters. Just as importantly, these templates are presented as options: the writer is in a position to make decisions about his writing. This is more effective than writing, “Don’t forget to let the hiring committee know what position you’re applying for!” or “Try for a stronger verb, here.” While these guiding suggestions are accurate, they don’t tell the writer how to follow the instructions.
- Student sentence: “The fact that all the senior executives were assumed with marketing responsibilities could cause failure.”
Deepti’s response:
“Do you mean “overwhelmed by” or “burdened with”?
Her response provides her understanding of his intended meaning, offers multiple applicable alternatives, and shows that verb phrases include specific prepositions.
- Student phrase: “When the show began, I saw a Arab man who wore white robe”
Deepti’s response:
“Here, I felt like I needed an article. Since this is the first time you are talking about “white robe,” you can say “I saw an Arab man who wore a white robe”… If you mention this same white robe again later in subsequent sentences, then you would say “the white robe” or “the white robe that the Arab man wore…””
We’re continuing to develop response strategies that give students all the information they need to apply the feedback they receive, and that provide as many opportunities as possible for later transfer. If you’re a teacher, what strategies have you used to help writers acquire new language, or to gain grammatical and syntactical flexibility? If you’re a writer, what written feedback has been most helpful?
Published October 20, 2015
