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Nina Odnoletko,

a teacher of English

Sumy

GOLDEN RULES FOR THE TEACHER

It is quite natural that there is a tendency to study written work more closely and thoroughly because it accessible to careful inspection. Also, students expect to be informed of their progress. So if we indicate the ways in which a piece of writing is defective, we should also point out in what ways we think it is successful. For example, we should inform the students that they have made good use of connectives or of punctuation devices.

Teachers spend a lot of time providing critical information on their students’ written work. Why do we this feedback? The answer is very simple. We make short comments so that our students would not feel confused and extensive suggestions so that our students would not have any doubts.

The following guidelines might be helpful to the teacher:

1. Remember to return written work as soon as possible. If you delay, interest will wane. At the same time, the fact that you return written work promptly shows that you care.
2. There is little point in your students working if they are not going to learn as much as possible from mistakes they make. The ‘reward’ for doing written work is the feeling that something is being learnt; If students realize that their teacher is too indifferent to correct efficiently, they follow his/her example and become reluctant to do any written work.
3. Learn to expect errors that occur regularly at certain stages in a student’s learning development

For instance, after learning the past tense forms of regular verbs, students will tend to over generalize produce forms like ‘catched’ and ‘teached’. View these as signs of learning rather than as unforgivable errors.

4. Read the written work more than once as different aspects of language support one another and  your feedback will be more efficient if you take every aspect into consideration.

-While reading for the first time focus on the content avoiding language errors.

- While reading it for the second time evaluate the layout or any other aspect of the language you want to check.

- While reading for the third time look for the language errors. You may make comments in the margin indicating the type of mistake made, for example, syntax, word choice, tense, spelling sentence structure, etc. Mind that in case this is an examination paper, the assessor is not expected to make any corrections or write in the margins at all.

- At the end you may summarize the types of basic errors made in the form of a general final comment together with a positive recommendation.

5.  Make specific comments avoiding ambiguous language or jargon. Look at the list below. It might help when you feel like encouraging students and want to show your approval of the students’ performance.

Suggested ways to praise your student's work in writing:

You’ve tried hard!

Super!

Outstanding! 

You sound interesting! 

You make me happy/laugh!

You’ve brightened up my day!

I respect your serious attitude  (towards…) ! 

You are wonderful!

Good for you!

Well done!

Remarkable!

I knew you could do it!

I’m proud of you!

Fantastic!                                   

Clever of you!

First rate!

Promising / It’s quite promising!

Good realization of the task!

Excellent treatment of the task!

You are on target!

You have things / matters well in hand!

You are on top!

You’ve discovered the secret!

Number one essay!

You hit the nail on the head!

Pride yourself on the work done!

You are at the point of fulfilling the task very successfully!

You are on the point of fulfilling the task quite well!

Now you’ve got it!

Your ideas are challenging!

A good job!

You are unique!

You are a winner!

A great discovery!

Magnificent!

Terrific!

A creative job!

Exciting!

What imagination!

What a good/convincing writer you are!

6.  Just as our students write with an audience in mind, it is our responsibility to show an awareness of the student as an audience. We should not overestimate their ability to understand comments that are beyond their comprehension level or more suitably addressed to another teacher than to a student.
7.  Respond to the written work with questions as well as statements. A question like 'Have you moved to another point, now?' to indicate abrupt change of topic instead of “awkward transition” is much more precise and easier to understand.

8. Note the strengths as well as weaknesses. Do not allow the errors to distract you from commenting positively on a student’s attempt to produce something to the best of his/her potential. It is easier to locate the weaknesses in a paper than the strengths, but we should never forget that doing justice to our students involves noting both the positives and the negatives.

9. Treat errors with seriousness and care and make sure your students do, too. But do not let concern for errors dominate your writing class. If you do, you will be losing sight of the fact that we use sentences in sequence to express meaning, both in speech and writing. And expression of meaning is what we are aiming for in our language teaching and language learning.

10. Do not impose your own interpretation on the students’ writing. The students may misunderstand and think that what they have to say is not as important as what the teacher wants to say. In this way the changes that follow have nothing to do with what the students originally intended, as the teacher’s correc­tions may change the student’s originally intended flow of thought.

11.  We should respond to our students, not simply to their writing. According to the requirements for communicative teaching, we should adopt the role of genuinely interested readers rather than that of evalu­ators. We have to learn to teach at the level where the student is, not where the teacher wishes the student to be.

12. Don’t forget that students can benefit greatly from learning how to assess their own progress. Learners can be as good judges of their own progress as their teachers, if:

- standards of proficiency are clearly described

- assessment is related to a specific experience

- students receive some training in self-assessment

Being able to assess themselves helps your students realize that they are actually progressing. And if, by chance, your students have the impression that they are not learning simply because the teacher is not present to monitor them, self-assessment should show that this is not true. Finally, self-assessment is some­thing students can do inside and outside school; it relates to the full extent of language skills development, not just to what is going to be tested in examinations.

13. The teacher must decide what he/she wants to test and why and should always remember that every test should cover content and skills. Before giving a test, the teacher should be pretty sure of the answers to the following questions:

• what are students expected to know?
• what are students expected to do?
• how can the teacher measure both?

14.  You’ll be a successful assessor if you stick to these four principles of testing:

• curriculum objective: all assessments should arise from work done in class
• assessment objective: a task should be clearly explained
•  relevance: a task should be build on a student’s previous experience
• fairness: students should know exactly what they are supposed to do when and how much, and how the teacher will evaluate their work