Have you ever imagined yourself finding an official paper from the Principal of the school on your desk, with lots of red Marks on it, telling you what you had done wrong in the first term? How would you feel yourself?
Feedback is always nice for the improvement of the things as well as it is really important for learning process. As a result of this, teachers love error correction and most of the time we do it with a red pen to show that it’s an alarming case.
Have you ever wondered the curse of the red pen from students’ point of view?
They try their best on their work and in return, they usually get papers with lots of red dots, X’s and lines…It must be really discouraging to see all these things in one place whereas we should encourage our students with our positive feedback.
Should we use pink pen and put smiles around the paper? :)
I am not sure about this but all I want to say that error correction is one of the key elements in language learning. We can at least try to show our students the strong points of their papers as positive feedback.
Error correction ! How can we manage it and how much should it be?
I am really looking forward to hearing your comments,
Don’t forget to keep yourself away from the “curse of the red pen”…
Happy blogging everyone…
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Comments
Hi :) I always think this topic... You touch the good point... For me , it is not good for lots of red dots :( When I see it,,,I feel unhappy and sad! So, for as a pen me purple one gives me inspiration every time :) I like purple and pinkkkkk :) They are lovelyyyyy :) So,I really abhorrent for the red dots ;)
I always wondered if I had had 200 students to teach, how long it would have taken to correct all their writings? Reading, correcting, commenting on, editing each paper by myself... Then I decided I would teach my Ss revise and edit their own papers developing their revising and editing skills. I devote some class time to correct careless errors before they hand out their works to me. Regularly I hold mini-conferences during class with each student. Also, I give them editing quizzes. There are lot of tools nowadays, the simple one is computer spell-checker. They can do peer-correction.
I know that teachers like error correction forgetting the fact that every time, when she/he correcting ALL the errors, s/he taking away a learrning opportunity from her/his Ss.
There is nothing that screams "uneducated" louder than a text riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes. When you express yourself in writing, accuracy is important. This is true in any language. You may think it's too harsh to tell your students that "too many mistakes make you look stupid" but I believe it's the truth. So, I do cover the page in red if I have to (or green or blue or purple - who cares what color you use?). I also always ask that the students rewrite their papers. That way they learn from their mistakes.
Hi Leman,
I don't think that it is nice with red markers, so you are right. Maybe we can at least try to emphasize the strong points of their papers with positive tools, as you said purple and pink are the best :)
Thanks for suggesting my favourite colors :)
Dear Victoria,
I totally agree with your last sentence, sometimes we really take away that opportunity which isn't so good. Peer correction is another useful type for teachers but ofcourse there are some papers that cannot be treated with peer correction. Maybe to save time, we can do both peer correction and then teacher correction, I am not sure if it is that effective but worth trying, Lovely to hear your ideasi Thank you :)
Karin,
It is really important to rewrite the end product again. But sometimes I think we should encourage our students to use the language more by giving them positive feedback such as showing them the strong points of their work. However, what you do is the most common case in error- correction. Thanks for sharing your ideas,
Thanks for your comment. Actually, I never do marking on my Ss' papers. If there's something wrong, I ask them to check it again, I teach them to think, self-evaluate and self-monitor (on a metacognitive level). These are good strategies for them to learn for the future. I don't want to "drive away" their motivation and self-confidence. They should believe and trust themselves.
I talked to my colleagues from Africa, and they told me, they use a green pen!
Victoria, it is another important issue, we can help them to improve their critical thinking skills but sometimes with beginner levels especially, they may need some guidance , at least just underlining the wrong parts...
In Africa, they use green pen, It is really interesting to learn this. Keep yourself away from the curse of green pen in Africa :)
Thanks for your comment, dear. I agree, at the beginner level we should point at some errors or slips guiding them with the proper scaffolding. Though again, I don't underline, I just point at mistakes to let Ss think and find mistakes by themselves. :))))))))
I agree with Karin, but also think we shouldn't over-correct (after a while I believe all teachers have this down to a fine art). They need to know how important it is to write well. If what a student writes is so bad everything on the paper would be red, I don't touch it. I sit down with the student and try to explain the task again.