· Reasons for asking students to write English journals
* Fluency practice
It helps to get the words flowing. You can't work on improving their writing until they produce words and sentences. The more the better.
* Source of ideas
A journal entry might hold an idea for an essay or other more formal writing.
* Non-threatening
Because you define it as informal writing, students are less afraid of making mistakes. Because they are more relaxed and have fewer fixed ideas about what a journal should be, they often write better in their journals than in formal essays.
* Audience and argument
Students learn that they can actually communicate in writing. They have readers and the readers have opinions.
* Self-expression
Students write about what interests them instead of assigned topics. This is motivating.
* Practising English
Students can practise using new words and expressions they have learned elsewhere.
* Information
In a journal students will tell you what they like and dislike and what is on their minds more generally. This helps you to know them and teach them better.
· Responding to journals
* Don't grade them
Otherwise you will arouse their anxiety.
* Comment on the content
This tells the students that you got the message and have something to say about it.
* Don't correct grammar
This is free writing, they should be focusing on expression rather than accuracy.
* Respond to the whole class
Give a feedback session on common errors you notice they are making in their journals.
The Internet TESL Journal
Grammar Correction in ESL/EFL Writing Classes May not Be Effective
Most ESL/EFL writing teachers would strongly agree with that grammar correction from a teacher is a necessary part of any writing course. This belief seems to be intuitively obvious, but solid research conducted in the last 20 years has revealed it to be wrong.
The first reason why giving grammar feedback doesn't work is that it treats only the surface appearance of grammar and not with the way language develops.
Secondly, learning grammar in a second language is a complex and gradual process which occurs both developmentally and hierarchically. If a student is given a correction for a stage he has not yet reached, it would not be effective. In order to offer useful corrections, a teacher would need to know precisely what developmental stage the student is at in terms of their grammar level. Yet because of the complexity involved in learning grammar, this would be a virtual impossibility.
The third reason for the ineffectiveness of grammar correction involves the practicalities associated with teachers' comments and students' understanding of these comments. Research has shown that corrections made by second language writing teachers are inconsistent and frequently arbitrary. They also depend greatly upon the age of the L2 students and the amount of time the teacher has with them. Moreover, students often find teachers remarks to be vague, confusing, and contradictory. They can feel that teachers do not provide sufficient grammatical explanations about their writing mistakes.
Finally, students generally only make a mental note of the corrections they have understood. If they have to rewrite their papers, they regularly do not incorporate these corrections into their work.
Of the four skills we teach our learners, writing, along with speaking, is productive and is usually done towards the end of a lesson. Here are two activities that can be used at most levels that can act as fun alternatives to the usual writing tasks:
· First Activity: Making Sentences
Put some words on the board and tell your learners to write five sentences. These are the rules:
*You can't change any words;
*You can't add your own;
*You can repeat them;
*You must make five sentences that make sense.
Can your learners link the sentences together so that they make sense? Although this is a controlled practice activity, your students will find it fun and challenging.
· Second Activity: Running Dictation
Write a list of sentences on a sheet of paper and place it somewhere on the wall in the classroom. Put your learners into pairs and make sure they have a blank sheet of paper and a pen. Now get them to decide who will be the first “Writer” and who will be the first “Runner”.
Explain to the learners that one person from each team will run to the paper and memorize the first sentence. Then they return and whisper the sentence to their partner, who writes it down. When finished, the learners swap between the two roles until all the sentences have been transferred from your sheet of paper to the pad on which your learners are writing.
www.eslteaching.net
Suggestions for Evaluating ESL Writing Holistically
Assessing second language writing can be a daunting task for ESL teachers. Many teachers choose holistic evaluation because of its effectiveness in establishing overall writing ability. Holistic evaluation involves reading a paper quickly in order to gain a broad impression of a writer's skill. It is often used for informing placement decisions and measuring student achievement. What follows are some basic suggestions for ESL professionals when assessing writing holistically.
· Familiarize Yourself with a Holistic Scoring Rubric
A holistic scoring rubric guides teachers by explaining what features to scrutinize as they read. These descriptions are useful because they give evaluators a sense of what aspects of a student's writing should be critiqued.
· Read for an Overall Impression
Holistic evaluation is concerned with viewing the paper in its entirety rather than its individual parts; evaluators use their time most effectively by reading in a continuous, smooth fashion.
· Know Your Students' Backgrounds
Writing clearly and adeptly is a learned skill that can be challenging for both native and nonnative English speakers. When teachers read student texts, they should be aware that students might be transferring rhetorical patterns from their first language to English. A general awareness of these differences allows ESL educators to better understand their students.
Holistic evaluation is a useful tool that informs teachers and allows them to meet students' need.
