Reading Mitchell Goins’ (2015) article about written corrective feedback reminded me of the struggle to provide individualized feedback to students that is both effective and manageable. As Goins stated, metalinguistic written corrective feedback can provide the benefits of both direct and indirect feedback. Students are given clear instruction about the type of error made and how to correct it while still being required to process the error and correct their own work. However, teaching one writing issue to a whole class does not provide any differentiation, and as I read, I kept thinking about the following question: How can we meet our students’ needs while providing effective individualized support without overburdening our teachers?

In this article, I describe how I developed a strategy that incorporates both targeted mini-lessons and a whole-team approach to support the individual language needs of second language writers. The students I describe are emergent writers who are beginning to express themselves and take risks in their writing, providing opportunities for instruction that targets their individual needs. My approach to providing written corrective feedback has evolved over a number of years from my experience teaching adult English language learners to my current position supporting 300+ Prekindergarten to Grade 12 English language learners in 20 schools in Saskatchewan, Canada. I also read research in this area, engaged in discussions with other teachers, and experienced a lot of trial and error. Through my work in this area, I have found this strategy to be most effective with students from Grades 4 and older whose English skills are midbeginner and higher.

Providing Feedback

Each student has his or her own journal of lined pages. The first page of the journal is the self-editing checklist, a record of the error types the student has learned how to correct. As an error type is identified, the teacher records it on the checklist. Each error type is recorded once, using the length of time between entries in the date column as an indication of how long the student works on any particular error type. Once the student achieves approximately 80% success self-correcting for that error, the teacher selects another error type on which the student needs to focus.

Figure 1. Self-editing checklist

The bullet points below describe the steps used in this journal.

• The student writes his or her original text on the left-hand page of the journal; the lines should be double-spaced. The topic may be generated by either the student or teacher. Some teachers have the students write in class, while others do their writing as homework.

• The teacher reads the student’s writing, identifying a variety of error type patterns, and then selects one on which to focus. I recommend selecting an error that reflects a grammar pattern or rule rather than writing style and beginning with basic rules that are easier to teach (e.g., capitalization, subject-verb agreement, use of verb tenses). The teacher uses a highlighter to highlight the places in the student’s text where the error occurred. No correction is made at this point.

• The student is then asked to reflect on their writing first, and then they share their reflections with either the teacher or the whole class. Students think about the following questions: Why do you think the teacher highlighted those areas? Can you see a pattern? What is it? How can it be corrected? It is surprising how often the students can identify the error from the highlights.

• Once the error type is identified, the teacher provides a short mini-lesson in class on how and why the correction is made. New material should be used for this instruction, not the student’s journal entry, and the lesson should be 10 minutes or fewer. If it requires more time, teachers can scaffold the instruction into smaller parts and teach each successive step as the previous steps are learned. I recommend using new material for mini-lesson instruction for two reasons: to avoid student embarrassment from seeing their errors shared with the class, and to encourage engagement as each student applies what he or she has learned to his or her own writing.

• The student then corrects his or her own work. Students should not erase their initial error; instead, they should use the extra space provided between the lines to note the corrections they made. This provides meaningful material to return to should the student need it for further study.

• Finally, the student rewrites his or her passage on the right side of the page, correcting the studied errors. This helps reinforce the student’s correct form without showing the initial error.

• With each successive journal entry, the student is expected to self-correct the error types already learned, as noted on the checklist. Once the student achieves an 80% success rate, the teacher selects a new error type on which to focus. Eventually, the student may make fewer errors which need correcting. At this point, the teacher may begin to teach strategies for improving the complexity and quality of the student’s writing, continuing the highlighting and mini-lesson structure of instruction.

Managing Mini-Lessons

In order to make the delivery of mini-lessons manageable, teachers should aim to group their students by the writing issue they need help with. For instance, students who need to edit for run-on sentences receive separate instruction from those who are working on subject-verb agreement. These groups are fluid and change as needs are identified and addressed. Grouping students in this way allows the teacher to provide customized instruction to groups of students rather than separately to each individual student. Once in while, a student may require individual instruction, but to date, this has rarely occurred.

Teachers can also deliver mini-lessons by delivering one mini-lesson per day and/or spreading the group lessons out over a few days. In my class, for instance, this means that the rest of the class only has one 10-minute block for independent reading or work rather than a series of blocks throughout one lesson. Teachers in my schools have also experimented with workstations, computers, and the flipped classroom approach to deliver customized lessons, providing differentiated instruction for independent learners and creating opportunities for teachers to work with students who require more support.

Final Reflections

It is important for teachers in other subject areas to support the student’s writing improvement by working collaboratively. When I was a classroom teacher, I was responsible for the journal writing process described above, and my colleagues supported this process in their subject areas by using the self-editing checklist as a guide for assessing the student’s work. Each subject-area teacher would assess and correct the student’s work for content, but when they assessed students’ English language use, the teachers used a highlighter and only highlighted the errors that matched the items listed on the student’s self-editing checklist. In this way, they were not teaching new grammar or writing issues, but encouraging the student to use their prior knowledge to improve their writing in all subjects. Students have stated that they appreciate being able to focus on one issue at a time, avoiding the red ink that used to cover their assignments. Because they have to reflect on their own writing throughout the process, they become more mindful while writing. Students who require direct language instruction receive it, and the instruction is focused on their individual needs.

While we feel this strategy has been successful, my colleagues and I did struggle somewhat with how to share the self-editing checklists amongst the staff. We tried using an online sharing board, sending updates by email, and even posting notices in the staffroom. Each approach proved cumbersome, so we decided each student would be responsible for sharing their updated checklists with their teachers when submitting an assignment. Another struggle was that some colleagues have participated more actively than others. Many teachers chose to only check the English in some, rather than all, of the assignments they received, and some subject-area teachers were also not comfortable teaching English grammar, so they appreciated leaving the mini-lessons to someone who is. It became apparent to me that participation and success were only possible if I was willing to differentiate for both the needs of my colleagues and my students.

Despite these minor challenges, this process of providing individualized written corrective feedback has evolved into a strategy that can be used with all students, whether they are English language learners or native English speakers, and in all subject areas to support the development of student writing. It should be noted that teachers who plan to implement a school-wide team approach with this writing strategy should provide their colleagues with an overview of how this strategy works and clear instructions as to what their role is. Working as a team to help our students improve their writing appears to be meeting a need in both our students and staff.

Reference

Goins, M. (2015). Written corrective feedback: Strategies for L2 writing instructors. SLW News. Retrieved from http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolslwis/issues/2015-10-07/3.html.

Liz Rowley is an EAL consultant for the South East Cornerstone Public School Division in Saskatchewan, Canada. She earned her master’s degree in TESL/TEFL from Birmingham University in the UK, and she has taught in Canada, England, and South Korea. She currently supports EAL students, their teachers, administrators, and families across the school division.