Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Derrek]

The good news: My employer agreed to give me more evening hours, which will net me some extra cash.

The bad news: The class will be TOEFL writing, and instead of the 10 to 15 students we expected, we will have as many as 45 signed up. Am expecting about 35 or so to show up (common % turn-out for our students after signing up for extra classes).

Any suggestions on how I can teach this class without having to grade 45 papers continually, or at least grade part of them so I can have them write more than just one paper ever few weeks?

I am anticipating MANY errors, so I think I'm going to work 1 paragraph at a time through the different styles of responses, etc.

[Dawn]

I've got 30 students in a TOEFL writing class and have yet to find an easy way to keep up with marking. A couple of things that help, though, are oral revision are peer critique. When students complete the first draft of a writing assignment, they have to read it aloud and correct the errors they find while doing so. A number of more basic errors -- lack of "-s" or "-es" on plurals, simple subject-verb agreement errors, etc. -- get caught at this stage. Next, they exchange paragraphs with a peer and critique one another's work. The person doing the peer critique has several responsibilites. First, he or she must confirm that the first sentence is indeed a sound topic sentence. Next, he or she looks for at least three supporting details. If either of these is absent, the paper goes straight back to the author for some content improvement. If, on the other hand, the basics are there, the peer reviewer goes on to check for capitalization, punctuation, spelling and grammar errors.

I collect written work only after it's been proofed by both the original author and another student, mark the remaining errors, and also mark out any incorrect suggestion made by the peer critic. Once I've made final corrections, students must submit a re-write that reflects all the changes. (Otherwise, many of them have a tendency to ignore their errors and repeat them over and over and over again.)

To make everyone's work a little easier to follow, the original author must write in pencil (enabling easy, neat corrections while writing). Corrections made during oral revision must be ink. Corrections made during peer critique must be another color of ink, and I use a third color for my marking. The multi-color format enables me to confirm that students really are engaging in all steps of the writing process. This may not apply in your situation, but I've got a couple of "spoilers" -- first-year middle school kids in the class only because their mothers are forcing them to attend. If I don't verify that they're doing exactly what they're supposed to, they take every shortcut they think they can get away with.

[Ya-ta Boy]

You could do what my friend the student at Choongnam National University says her professors do: give an 'A' to everyone who turns in a paper of the required length on time. She says her profs can't possibly be reading them because many (most?) just Xerox pages out of books.

If that doesn't float your boat, try the constructive ideas the other poster gave.

You can also tell your students you will only correct a particular thing on each paper. Other mistakes can be taken care of by other students (justify this as review work).

[gypsyfish]

I've never done this, but have heard it works.

Have them give you cassette tapes, read the essays, and tape your comments instead of writing them.

If you try this and it works, let me know.

Good luck.

[Ody]

[tzechuk]

I took business English writing when I was doing my first degree. Instead of physically correcting any mistakes we might make, our professor just marked the mistakes, stating what was wrong with it - p for punctuation, sp for spelling and so forth. Basically we were not spoonfed information. We had to think about what was wrong. It's a useful method because it saves you time and your students learn at the same time.

[Saunagukin]

Some techniques I've heard of or tried..

Start with basics, topic sent, support, intro, conclu. Teach it and give an exercise of a sentence or a paragraph. Check the stuff from day before, while they write.

Assign due dates in groups, Group A is due one week, Group B due the next.

Peer response will reduce some error-correcting time on your part. Do it carefully, especially if they've never done it.

Don't tell them you can get the essays back to them the next day...duh.

Don't correct every error.

[bosintang]

One thing a philosophy professor of mine did was a have a light lateness penalty...however if we passed a paper in late, we would receive a mark but no comments or feedback. Not a good idea if you're teaching high school, but if you're teaching University this is an idea you may want to consider.