Job Discussion Forums

[ghost]

What strategies do you use if you have between 250-300 students in your writing classes (total of 6 sections), and you need to correct their papers. If one corrected 250-300 essays per week, the workload would be phenomenal.

One teacher here, selects a random group of 5-10 students per week, for a total of around 50-60 papers per week, with a coding system used to point out faults.

Another question - any good topic suggestions for third year English majors?

The main issue is to find a viable way to teach this, and for students to get feedback, without being bogged down 24/7 by similar style written essays, which students would like to have corrected.

Any other suggestions. Thank you.

Ghost in China

[currentaffairs]

How to do a good job is to tell your boss that you will teach two or three writing classes and not six. It is unsustainable. Random marking or peer correction is really papering over the cracks..

[7969]

[LarssonCrew]

Honestly ghost I hope you are pulling in over 20000 a month.

Ideally every class or every other you'd take in some writing samples from every student to check they're progressing. Having 6 classes is unworkable.

[ghost]

[Non Sequitur]

Even with selecting a sample to mark each week you still presumably need to set a final exam?
I tend to go along with the poster who suggests that this many writing classes is too many for one semester.

[nomad soul]

[OhBudPowellWhereArtThou]

Nomad Soul has a good handle on the situation.

In the states, having that many sections of writing is common, but even with native speakers, it is a huge burden. Generally, students are put into groups to do peer correction and review (as NS mentions). The teacher is given the names of the students in the groups and reassigns the better writers so that there is one in each group. This strategy may work for you in China.

The teacher may grade 1-3 papers from each student per semester.

After the students are given writing strategies and form and format, it is a simple matter of assigning a topic and requiring each student to write his paper. The students correct each others' papers in class. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it might work in your Chinese class room. It works (in varying degrees depending upon the teacher) in the native English speaking class room.

Let your students know that no grades will be assigned until their papers reflect appreciable progress. As the term progresses, you may see real progress, especially if the students can at least speak well.

I had a group of students who were actually stellar speakers of English. Their first attempts at writing, however, produced garbage. I'm not sure if it was laziness on their part or if they had never really taken writing as a college or high school course, but the crummy papers kept coming for almost half the term was over. When I was asked when they would receive grades, I told them that no grades would be issued until they began writing intelligible papers. Their writing improved markedly after that.

But back to correcting.

I think that the teacher must at least pretend to read the papers. The teacher should collect the papers from each group one class at a time in a way that doesn't cause him too much strain, make marks on the paper indicating that one sentence was good, and perhaps make pencil or ink dots just to show that the paper has been read at least in part. A question mark next to a nonsensical sentence will indicate that you don't understand the sentence. Assign no grade except for a plus (+) or minus (-) at the top of the page. All of this can be accomplished just by scanning the page.

Studies have shown that comments written in the margins have a greater impact on the students' writing than the actual corrections to the paper. [Andrea Lunsford]. If you make specific comments, do it in the margins and refer to a particular sentence or grammatical construction by circling it.

That the OP has been given such an incredibly burdensome load indicates that the school doesn't expect much progress (or perhaps that the school has absolutely no ability to teach writing). For the OP's own sake, he should at least show that he has a method in place for all students and that he is continually monitoring the progress of each class. Merely sampling a few papers from each class will probably impede the class' progress because the students' whose papers are not chosen receive no benefit whatsoever. This method will just encourage students to become slackers. With each class and each assignment students will gamble that the teacher won't choose their paper, and the student will never put forth any effort.

If your class' speaking ability is good, the best advice that you can give is for the student to write it in English as he says it.

Again, I believe that it is imperative that the teacher give each students' paper some (ableit scant) attention .

Note: In a native English-speaking class room in the U.S., what I describe is a common practice in some freshman English programs. My personal feeling about it is that it removes the teacher from the teaching process unless the class begins the term at a high level. However, in China, the number of hurdles in the process of teaching English composition are so many and the number of students is so high, peer review and teacher oversight may produce the best (maybe the only) results.

[cdchristy]

The comments on this forum topic have been insightful. Let me add a few things from my perspective. I have actually asked Chinese college students whether they prefer to learn writing from a foreign teacher (meaning myself) or a Chinese English writing teacher. Despite knowing about my professionalism and my being a PhD, they almost always choose the latter. It seems that many feel more comfortable learning English writing by having it explained in Chinese and memorizing language patterns. They are usually focused on whatever trick will help them pass the CET and TEM (all levels) with the least amount of effort. To some extent, this is understandable as their performance on these tests may be critical in regard to their future.

In this class, this may be the mindset. Certainly, they are not used to a more Western approach to teaching writing. During my time here, I have tutored some English faculty with extremely high IELTS speaking scores (7.5-8.5) but low IELTS writing scores (4.5-5.5). While working with them, I discovered they reached their level of ability using the Chinese methods previously mentioned.

With this in view, I highly suggest you focus on helping them learn the logical progression within an essay. This would include a good first sentence and a thesis in the Intro followed by the body and conclusion with appropriate transitions.

Apart from the aforementioned, I also want to comment on your pay. Many OE teachers make this kind of money and basically need only to show up to class if they have already developed the teaching plans from a previous year. Usually, they give some easy to grade final exam. You will have to work much harder to perform a reasonably good service for your students.

What would I do? I would probably talk to the FAO and the English department. I would probably give them some options and let them choose. For instance, I would tell them my teaching plan if nothing changes (it would be non-negotiable). If they would prefer, I would change my plans so long as the number of students significantly dropped. Finally, I would tell you to ask for more money, but my experience tells me this is a lost cause.

[7969]

[Volver]

I have a question related to this thread.

What I really need is a scoring matrix with numbers (the highest possible score would be 100) that I can use to grade papers. There would be different areas for spelling, organization, grammar, form, etc. I don't have anything like the numbers the OP has, so I can afford to spend more time on each paper. Had this at a previous school but can no longer find it.

Any suggestions?

V

[OhBudPowellWhereArtThou]

[nomad soul]

[RiverMystic]

You will hate me for this, but...

So you are going to mark 60 PAPERS PER WEEK FOR RMB7000 a month! Good God! Even with speed marking that's a minimum of ten minutes per paper, or a total of 600 minutes (10 hours) of marking. EVERY week! On top of your teaching, prep and other admin! And it just isn't possible to go ten hours flat out, no break, so it's really more like 12-15 hours. That is really, really stressful. And boring as f@&$!

But hey, maybe you love the pain!

Go to elance.com, hire an Indian with a PhD to do the marking. Then start doing tutoring to get some real income.

And get sponsorship from a red pen manufacturer.

[ghost]