I have been teaching academic IELTS for 5 years now so have marked quite a few essays. I find the following techniques are of the most use to the student without demoralising them, leaving them baffled or spoon-fed because the teacher has written in the correction for them:-

1. As they are not allowed to use dictionaries in the exam, they have to develop confidence and skill in making sensible guesses about the meaning of words they don't know as well as learning to recognise words which occur more frequently.

2. I get my students to frequently practice identifying the key words in an essay title.

3. We regularly practice paraphrasing essay titles which can then serve as an introduction and also shows whether students actually understand the question or not.

4. I regularly elicit from them what is required - appropriate number of paragraphs, number of words, etc.

5. I show them examples of model essays so that they become familiar with the customs of essay writing in English which they may not have seen before.

6. I get my students to practise making essay plans and to use them like a formula (a lot of mine are science students who are learning English out of necessity rather than interest).

7. When instructing my students to write an essay, I always ask them to leave a 2cm margin on the left-hand side and to leave double line spacing so that there is room for me to write comments like "Good point" or "Is this always true?" etc.

8. When marking, I don't necessarily use a red pen - it could be purple or green. Just a different colour to get their attention. Another device I use sometimes is to use a highlighter pen in orange, blue or pink and highlight the sections which need correcting.

9. I tick liberally wherever I see something the student has done right e.g. made a valid point, used a modal verb or more complex grammar structure, appropriate tense etc. That means even the weakest students see a couple of ticks on the page and feel encouraged to keep trying.

10. Make the correction the student's problem and responsibility by drawing up a list of correction codes e.g. ww = wrong word, sva = subject verb agreement, wp = wrong preposition, T = wrong tense, V = too vague, R = repetition, wf = wrong word form etc. Make sure the students have a copy of this when you return the marked essays and get them to rewrite the essay in class, using the correction codes to indicate what needs correcting. When rewriting, they are allowed to use dictionaries or ask me for help.

11. I recommend using the IELTS criteria for marking e.g. there are 4 strands to the overall mark based on range & accuracy of grammar, lexical range, coherence & cohesiveness and content. When marking essays, I give marks out of 10 on each of those 4 areas giving them an overall mark out of 40. This shows the student where their strength and weaknesses lie e.g. could be they present a strong argument but need to do more work on their grammar or vocabulary.

12. Lastly, I remind students frequently that even with native speakers we know that people who write well read a lot and encourage them to read quality newspapers on a daily basis and to keep it short and sweet so that they don't feel overwhelmed by the idea of reading copious amounts (unless they want to).

Hope this is useful. Good luck.

Hi.. 

I believe this refers to tendencies of teachers to focus on the smallest details of the answer. Say for instance that the student submitted an article that has erasures on it, normally the checker would mark down on the erasures for "cleanliness category". We give comments to that area, but we fail to see the fact that the article presented clear facts and strong points as well. We gave more emphasis on the accuracies such as punctuation marks and number of words, but we fail to see the context and the thought of the whole write up. Some students may fail to do things "accurately"  but they can present ideas clearly and smartly. 

Thank you. Hope it helps.