How Might Teachers Respond To Writing As A Work In Progress - Research Paper Example

HOW MIGHT TEACHERS RESPOND TO WRITING “AS A WORK IN PROGRESS” Author’s Name: Course Name and Number: Tutor Name: Date Submitted: Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 HOW MIGHT TEACHERS RESPOND TO WRITING “AS A WORK IN PROGRESS” 3 Introduction 3 Research 3 Importance of feedback 4 Types of feedback and methods of delivery 5 Formative feedback 5 Teacher feedback 6 Peer feedback 6 Self initiated feedback 7 Teacher- Student Conferencing 7 Audio recorded feedback 8 Summative Assessments 9 Portfolios 9 Holistic or analytic marking schemes 10 Computer based assessment 11 Learner Response to feedback 12 Time Issues 14 Type of class or institutional context 15 Logistics: Where, When and How Often 15 Classroom implications on management of teaching writing 16 Conclusion 17 Bibliography 19 HOW MIGHT TEACHERS RESPOND TO WRITING “AS A WORK IN PROGRESS” Introduction For a long period, teachers have been giving judgment and feedback on the final paper or essay. Students do the writing but they get to feedback on their work after they have finished writing. This has resulted to waste of time in multiple ways. First, the learner writes the whole paper and then does the correction after the teacher goes through it at the end. The student then has to do a revision of the whole paper based on the teacher’s feedback. This results to waste in time as the student would have done the corrections as they progress to write the paper. The learner might be writing the wrong essay all along without knowing that they are making mistakes, after they are through with the paper, the get feedback the whole paper is wrong and they have to redo the paper. This wastes a lot of time and energy, which was avoidable, if the teacher, gave feedback and guidance at different stages in the writing. In this paper, we explore why a teacher needs to make a judgment on the paper as the student goes on with the writing and not waiting until the paper is complete. This will work to save time for the student and the teacher, as he will not have to go through the whole paper. Giving feedback as the paper goes also motivates students to keep in writing, as they know they are doing the right thing. Most students hate repetition especially when they have to redo the whole paper Research Many researchers have done studies on how the teacher can judge writing as a process instead of judging it as a final product. In this research, we are going to assess the role of feedback to ensure that the teacher is part of the writing process and not the product. The different types of feedbacks will be discussed while their usefulness and effectiveness determined. Moreover, we will analysis the role of the teacher is class management. At the end of this paper, we will establish how teachers can judge writing as an ongoing process rather than judging it as the final product. Importance of feedback Feedback to students is a noble learning process. Feedback is crucial for consolidating and encouraging learning1. Especially the people working in the areas of second language writing acknowledge its relevance. Feedback helps students to get control over their writing and composing skills. This becomes helpful for a student to be able to write independently after getting feedback. Feedback helps learners to consolidate new ideas. This makes the new ideas memorable. After getting feedback, the students cannot forget what the feedback was about and thus consolidates what they have learnt. Feedback is also useful for teachers and students who employ genre-oriented approaches. It gives students rhetoric choices for new professional and academics skills. This assists students to get access to new practices and knowledge. Feedback helps teachers to support learners by giving suggesting revisions in the process of writing rather than at the end of writing. This ensures continuity in writing. This also helps to save time as feedback is given bit by bit as writing proceeds. This gives time to attend to emerging problems before the writing is over. Feedback also helps students to be certain of what they are writing. It helps the students ease the tension of wondering whether he/she is making himself understood. Feedback at different stages in writing helps one to break the isolation of writing as there is someone who is helping the writer know if they are making sense or not. This encourages the write to go on writing because they know they already have an audience that is willing to read their drafts and make corrections for them without reprimanding them. Feedback also helps students develop better writing strategies. Through feedback, the students are able to know how to organize their writing in a more professional way. The student is able to learn which writing strategy to use and when to do so. It improves the learner’s writing skills.s Types of feedback and methods of delivery Although giving feedback is a crucial undertaking in writing and education in general, it is necessary to know what type of feedback to use and why it qualifies to be used. Not all types of feedback apply to all situations. It is therefore essential to determine the best form of feedback before giving the feedback. The teacher should analyze a student first and choose a good method when giving feedback. Formative feedback Formative feedback comprise of a number of feedback mechanisms that help to find out how far learning has taken place. The mechanisms aim to determine how much students have learnt as well as their progress. It refers to the information given back to the learners to modify their thinking and improve their learning. Teacher feedback This refers to situations where the teacher gives feedback to the learner about their writing. The teacher can do this either formally or informally. Informal feedbacks take place when the teacher stops by a learner’s desk and makes comments on their work. This type of feedback is immediate and gives instant suggestions to the student on how to improve their work. Oral feedback has several advantages over the written feedback. The students are able to understand better because the feedback is clearer and detailed. In addition, students can question what they do not understand. The feedback is also immediate as the teacher makes it as he goes around the class, Formal feedback is situations where the learner attends a conference with the teacher for feedback. The teacher gives feedback on the progress towards the student’s goals, discusses the progress with the student, and helps them set new goals. Learners can avoid mistakes and to achieve higher marks in writing. Peer feedback This happens when students seek ideas and opinions from each other. Peer feedback gives students chances to give ideas, compliments, and suggestions about other students’ work. When set up properly, peer feedback can be highly effective because learners value each other’s ideas and opinions. The teacher should use Checklists and evaluation guides to keep the students on track and remind them the importance of giving positive feedback. Peer feedback helps students to build on their confidence. Reporting on other people’s writing requires confidence and this is developed through peer feedback. In addition, learners get to know how to take up responsibilities, as they have to work carefully with the other students. Learners also learn how to accommodate ideas from other people and accept diversity in writing. Peer feedback can be taken at any time of an assignment or writing. An activity of giving ideas can begin with writing. It can be structured in the middle of an assignment so that learners can do a revision on their work based on other students’ inputs. The teacher needs to monitor peer feedback so that students do not give each other misconceptions and flowed ideas2. Students are not supposed to be left alone since they might divert attention to other activities. Self initiated feedback This refers to the kind of feedback in which the students take steps to seek feedback from other parties like the students and teachers. Students do this to improve their written work as well as the quality. The writers in this case get motivation from the need to write quality work and thus they seek feedback to ensure quality is vital to their work. This is one of the best methods of feedback; this is because, the student is led by passion for excellence and is likely to take the feedback positively. This method of feedback coupled with robust and interactive learning processes instills the best principles in a student. This process gives students sense of ownership and they are, thus, motivated to learn more3. Teacher- Student Conferencing This refers to cases where the teacher gives one-on-one feedback to each student depending on the student’s personality and understanding. The response given to each student is different as the teacher takes time to know the need of each student and how best to handle them. This becomes a collaborative process where the teachers help learners understand how best to correct and revise their papers. In teacher-student conferencing, the teacher should not dominate the process; instead, they should allow students to be in charge of their writing. The teacher’s role should be giving directions. According to Hyland and Hyland, the teacher also needs to consider other factors when holding the conference with students4. Among these factors are, the social political factors, and the attitudes of students. These factors may affect the process of learning and it is therefore vital to address them for the process to be successful. The teacher should schedule the conferences in a way that the student will not have forgotten what they discussed in the previous conference. The conferences should be frequent so that timely feedback is given. Audio recorded feedback This is the feedback given by the teacher through recording. The teacher goes through the essays written by students and makes corrections. Then the teacher records his/her feedback on a tape or creates a link on a website where the student can access the feedback. This method is far much better than the written feedback because the feedback is more personalized. The teacher makes a recording about students’ work and suggests how to improve their writing. Audio-recorded feedback also allows the feedback to be passed across effectively and this makes the feedback more useful to students. It also allows better quality feedback to the students. Audio feedback also avoids misrepresentation, which is common in written feedback. Recent research has shown that students prefer audio-recorded feedback to other forms of feedback. Some students said that through audio-recorded feedback, they go through their work again as opposed to other forms of feedback. This has helped them improve their writing skills. Audio-recorded feedback is particularly intriguing because a student actively listens to the teacher’s voice. This makes the feedback appear practical. The feedback follows a process before it reaches the students. The teacher first obtains network space with computers. The teacher creates class folders and creates security permissions to these folders. This way, each student can access their results securely and no one else can access the results apart from the individual student. The teacher then grades the exams and creates sound files. As the teacher grades the essays and written materials, he makes comments and corrections to be made. After making and producing a sound file, the teacher saves it in individual student folders. The teacher then makes it a requirement that all the students access their folders for the feedback. Summative Assessments Summative feedback refers to the final assessment in a learning experience at a given point in time. Thus, method involves summing up a student’s achievement and the data collected is used to make judgments on the students’ achievements. These types of feedback have focus on the product of the learning process. Portfolios Summative portfolios use the attainment of learning outcomes to issues certificates. The portfolio requires that content and standards be specified. They also require rating instruments that well designed to be efficient in evaluating a student’s work5. These portfolios are used to demonstrate progress and achievement through a program. The portfolios provide a standard way of evaluating student performance. All students are evaluated under the same standards and this ensures uniformity in performance evaluation. This also eliminates the problem of subjectivity since the content and standards are preset. This improves reliability of the scores. Holistic or analytic marking schemes These are rating methods used by evaluators to make decisions about a student’s performance. Holistic marking schemes are developed on the assumption that a writing sample will be evaluated in the same way by different evaluators. However, the evaluators may decide to focus on different areas of the written material. Analytical marking scheme, on the other hand, provide the evaluators with a profile through which they will rate the written product. This ensures that all the evaluators focus on the same aspects of the written materials6. The problem with the analytic marking scheme is that it is time consuming and hard to choose the evaluation criteria. It is also expansive to conduct this kind of evaluation. The analytical marking scheme offers higher reliability than the holistic scheme because it has specific aspects the evaluators are looking at. Holistic marking schemes, on the other hand, are subjective as each evaluator decides on what to evaluate. Computer based assessment Computer based assessment is a way of administering tests in which the results are recorded and assessed electronically. This method helps trainers and teachers to schedule, administer and administer tests and exams. Today, computers are being used to score essays. This involves the use of regression analysis and statistical procedures to determine how number of paragraphs, punctuation, and sentence length could predict the scores for the essays. The first method used to grade essays is the project essay grades, which is used to score essays. This method only considers the surface features of the essays but do not consider the content. This method ensures that the words in the essay are in order and this makes the essay to follow a certain chronological order. The other method of scoring essays is the Latent Semantic Analysis. This method extracts the similarities between the passages and the texts. It is, therefore used to score the semantic content of the essay unlike the Project Essay Grade, which only scores the surface features. The advantage of the second method is that it gives immediate feedback to the learner. It also gives additional information on how to improve particular sub topics in the essay. The shortcoming is that the order of words in the essay is ignored. The third rating method is the E-rater. It uses regression analysis to grade essays. It is used to rate syntactic structure, topical analysis, and rhetoric structure. This method is remarkably efficient because it scores all elements of the essay. It rates the number of paragraphs in the essay and compares the use of vocabularies in the essay with that it is trained in. This method of evaluation has so many advantages over other types of evaluation and feedback in writing and learning in general. First, the method has increased delivery and efficiency in administration and scoring. This means that this method gives more reliable results than other methods. Secondly, there is unbiased test scoring and administration. The method also ensures increased student satisfaction and acceptance of the results as the students feel that results are no subjective. This method, however, has its shortcoming. First, it is a bit expensive, as the evaluators need to purchase computers and other software required in the evaluation, Costs to ensure security of the results also makes it more expensive. The other disadvantage is that user may get so much information from the sites making it difficult to interpret the feedback. Learner Response to feedback Studies on how students respond to feedback reveal that students value teacher feedback more than any other form of feedback7. However, different studies show that students pay attention to teacher feedback, it does not necessarily mean that the feedback helped them. A recent research carried out in class after a teacher’s feedback revealed the following results. 53% of the students used the corrections from the teacher feedback positively in the writing. 13% revealed mixed reactions on the corrections after the feedback while 34% revealed that the teacher feedback showed negative effects on the correction the students made8. This means that the students do not utilize all feedback positively. Students can respond to feedback in different ways. First, the student may use the feedback at face value, which means that the student will use the feedback for the sake of that paper alone. Secondly, the student may use the feedback in levels that are more meaningful. This means that the student will be able to use the feedback in different papers. The level at which the student uses feedback depends on the type of feedback from the teachers. Learners who receive content or meaning relate feedback makes substantial improvements on their drafts. Many factors determine how a student responds to the feedback. First, it is the immediacy of the response. The teacher should give the learner feedback immediately after doing the student finishes the task. This is because; the student needs to feel the connection between the writing and the feedback. The student may start other tasks and may not feel the connection between the feedback and the task. The teacher should be able to decide what type of feedback to give to a particular student and when to do so. The teacher should decide whether to give an intelligible comment on the written material or whether to give the detailed feedback. The teacher should give detailed feedback to the student to ensure that the student does not guess the right answers and this facilitates learning. The other factor that determines how the students are going to respond to the feedback is communication. Bilateral communication allows the student to own the feedback process and thus respond positively. When the teacher allows the student to communicate their feelings about their written materials, then the student make use of the feedback they get from the process. However, if the teacher imposes the feedback on the student, the latter is likely to resist the feedback and this where the feedback do not assist the student. The teacher should also devise different approaches of communicating feedback to the student since students learn in different ways. This will also make the process interesting and the learners are likely to take the feedback positively. Issues in feedback Teacher Feedback A vital issue in feedback is one of the teachers to learners. Recent studies have shown that students value teacher feedback more than other forms of feedback9. However, results show that of the students who made use of the teacher feedback, only half of the revisions had improvements. A third of the revisions were actually worse than the original drafts. This raises the issues of how effective teacher feedback is to the writers. The teachers appear to concentrate on giving feedback on errors instead of giving ideas on how to reorganize ideas for the student writers. The teachers are biased on correcting the students’ grammatical errors instead of the content10. As a result, students do not benefit from the feedback, as it does not focus on the content and organization of ideas in writing. Time Issues Allocating and scheduling time to give feedback is a complicated issue in feedback. Some students learn first than others and thus the teacher needs to take into account each student’s speed. This means that there are some students who will need help before they start their writing while others need feedback after they have finished writing. The teacher will therefore have to schedule his time wisely; otherwise, there will not be enough time to attend to individual students. The teacher needs to allocate time for both individual and group feedbacks. Type of class or institutional context This is another issue in feedback. The type of class or institution the students are in determines how feedback is going to be given to the learners. There are students who are in class and institutions because they want to learn how to write and improve their writing. Other students attend classes to pass time or to please their parents11. There are also adult students who are in class for different goals. Providing feedback to these students becomes a crucial issue because their interests in writing are different. The teacher should find ways of delivering feedback to these groups differently. The teacher has to attend to learners seeking to better their writing. The teacher should also find ways of motivating the students who are in class for other reasons. Logistics: Where, When and How Often Where, when and how often, in giving feedback, is another controversial issue. The teacher needs to consider how often to give some forms of feedback, for instance, the conference feedback12. The teacher should decide whether to be giving feedback on a weekly basis or after every class. However, the teacher needs to consider the amount of time available for teaching and the amount they can dedicate for feedback without affecting the syllabus Classroom implications on management of teaching writing Classroom management refers to the preparation of the classroom and the subjects so that the lesson goes on efficiently. It entails upholding harmony and control in class. In addition, classroom management involves addressing the needs of different students who are from different backgrounds. Classroom management in a writing classroom entails interaction between the teacher, the student, and the classroom environment. The teacher must lead when in classroom and direct the learners. They should also provide an enabling environment for learning. Learners also need to learn to maintain discipline and order in the classroom. The learners must be taught to value teachers and fellow students. The teacher should share the evaluation rationale and procedures with the students so that students can understand how they will be graded. This encourages students to pay much attention in their writing. This helps to improve writing for students. Class discussion should be encouraged so that students can know where others are making a mistake. This aids them to minimize incidences of same mistakes13. Teacher should share compliments for students who have done well in their writing. This encourages others to worker harder in their writing. The teacher must persuade learners to share their writing in progress with others. Help students develop rules for constructive criticisms14. Students should get time to read drafts from their peers and discuss them. It provides the learners confidence to write and address others. Peer discussion must be voluntary and students must willingly participate. Writing teachers should consider different characteristics of their students to ensure that the need of each student is taken care of. The teacher should consider the student’s age, socioeconomic status, cultural backgrounds, ethnicity, and ability. This will ensure that all students learn as per their abilities. The teacher should also consider other factors like the external factors affecting the student. The teacher should also keep with the pace of the students. This is because students learn at different paces and it would be beneficial considering this. Managing the class should also entail devising ways of motivating and reinforcing the learning process. Teachers should motivate students be giving encouraging words and compliments. This acts as a source of motivation for students to learn more. A teacher must also avoid negative compliments. When there is need to, they must do so in ways that will not hurt students. This is because, negative compliments may be discouraging the students, and they may lose their interest in learning and writing in general. The teacher should also make the class entertaining and interesting so that the students will enjoy the classes. Conclusion From the discussion above, it is clear that teachers can access the progress of the students even before the student can finish the work. It indicates that a teacher is capable of judging writing like a course of action and not a result. This is through the constant use of feedback throughout the writing process. The teacher gives constant feedback to the student so that corrections can be done well before the assignment is over. The teacher should use a different method of giving feedback to the students, as different students require different types of feedback. Knowing feedback is appropriate and its frequency is crucial. Time availability and the needs of the students determine this. The teacher must ensure that they do constant assessment as the writing process goes on. The teacher can use the formative assessment to determine how the students are progressing in their writing and help them make the necessary corrections. Alternatively, the teacher can use summative assessment to determine how much the student has learnt from the writing process. Whichever assessment the teacher uses, they should make sure that grading and students receive feedback. Lastly, the teacher can ensure continuity of the writing process through class management. This will ensure that the class goes on well while maintaining discipline and order. Interactions between the students and teachers should be encouraged so that the writing process becomes an all-inclusive process. This way, the students will own the writing process and enjoy learning how to write. 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