Effective Feedback in the ESL
Writing Class
Applying a Genre Approach
to Process Writing
Prof. Candelaria Luque
Prof. Patricia Meehan
FEEDBACK
• How do you give feedback to your students’
written work?
• Do we enjoy correcting composition?
• How detailed is your correction?
• If it is detailed, do you think it really pays off?
• Are you satisfied with the marks you assign? Are
your students satisfied?
• Do you feel your methodology is working well?
Why? Why not?
SOME CONSIDERATIONS WHEN REFLECTING UPON FEEDBACK
• Clear?
• Easy to understand?
• System of symbols?
• Consistent?
• Errors?
• Remedial Work?
• Negative comments?
• Praise
THE PROCESS APPROACH THE GENRE APPROACH
Writing is a thinking process Writing is a social activity
Emphasis on Emphasis on text and
the writer’s mental processes. context
Creative writer Reader’s expectations
Act of writing Final product
Idea generation Textual conventions
Goal: control of technique Goals: awareness and
control of the rhetorical
structures of different text
types.
FEEDBACK TECHNIQUES
ASSOCIATED WITH
PROCESS WRITING
1. TEACHER-STUDENT CONFERENCES
2. PEER FEEDBACK
3. RESPONSE GROUPS
4. SELF-EVALUATION
5. WRITING JOURNALS
6. PORTFOLIOS
1. TEACHER-STUDENT CONFERENCES
• Face-to-face meetings
• Non-directive comments to help the student
develop his/her critical and self-evaluation
skills
What should the teacher do?
– Read the paper carefully
– Offer encouragement
– Ask the right questions
– Make specific suggestions for revision
Pre-conference Questions for Teachers
1.What has the student done well?
2.What does the student need to improve?
3.Are there any errors that are consistent?
Pre-conference Questions for Students
1.Are there any comments or markings that you did
not understand?
2.Are there any comments or markings that you
understood but were not sure what to do with?
ADVANTAGES
• It offers individualized instruction in writing (It is more
effective than group instruction).
• The response to the paper can be more precise in an oral
conference than in written comments.
• The student can remember and understand more from an
oral response than from written comments.
• Conferences can promote self-learning.
2. PEER FEEDBACK
Students read and respond to the writing of
their classmates during any stage of the writing
process.
It should be an established routine in the class.
Students should be given explicit instruction
ADVANTAGES
• Learners become more autonomous as well as
more aware of what makes a good
composition.
3. RESPONSE GROUPS
• Students take turns to read out their written pieces to
group members and receive comments.
• Content-oriented or Grammar-oriented
• With the whole class
• There is a divergent audience
• Students show interest and respect
ADVANTAGES
• There is a divergent audience
• Students show interest and respect
SHORTHAND SYMBOLS
+ "I like this“
? "This puzzled me“
* "Say more here"
strong uses of language (for
example, vivid details, memorable phrases)
empty / ineffective words
( ) sentences which feel too full or are unclear.
[ ] around sentences that could be combined
4. SELF-EVALUATION
• Students should be fostered to reflect upon their
own writing, and their growth and development
as writers.
• ‘What do I do well as a writer?’
• ‘What is the most recent thing I have learnt to
do as a writer?’
• ‘What is it that I enjoy when I am writing?’
• ‘What do I find hard?’
5. WRITING JOURNALS
• It is a mirror of students’ improvement as they keep
all their reflections.
• It is a kind of ‘personal diary’
• Students can write about their experiences and
feelings about writing in general and/or about a
particular writing activity.
• It makes students feel at ease writing in English
• It gives them the chance to express themselves
• It can help students overcome writing anxiety and
focus on their learning processes
• It may be evaluated for quality rather than quantity.
6. PORTFOLIOS
• They provide a framework for the whole school
year
• They may consist of :
– a given number of pieces of written work
– their previous drafts
– peer responses
– notes from the conferences
– students’ reflections about writing
– any other relevant document
• CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE
GENRE APPROACH
THE GENRE APPROACH
• Definitions of Genre
They are abstract, socially recognised ways of using
language.
They are staged, goal-oriented social processes.
They can be identified by their schematic structure
and by repeated patterns of transitivity, reference,
conjunction.
• The main concern form, function, context,
communicative purpose, conventions for
organising messages.
STAGES WHEN TEACHING GENRES
• MODELLING
– Teacher-led presentation of the genre.
• Stages
• Purpose
• Lexico-grammatical features
• NEGOTIATION
– Teacher – student discussion of the genre
– Joint construction of a new text
• INDEPENDENT CONSTRUCTION
– Students individually construct a new text
IDEATIONAL LEVEL
• Processes? (type of verbs)
• Participants?(nouns and pronouns)
• Circumstances? (adverbs)
• Tenses? Present tenses? Which ones? Past Tenses?
Why? Which ones? Why?
• Lexical choices? (words, expressions) collocations?
prepositions?
TEXTUAL LEVEL
• Schematic structure? Opening? Introduction? Title?
Subtitles?
• Coherence?
• clearly organized and expressed?
• Ideas well supported?
• illustrated with examples?
• consistent?
• Connectors? Text “reader-friendly”?
• Cohesion? lexical cohesion? Repetition? Synonymns?
• Pronouns? clear reference? Agreement?
• Themes? Focus? Emphasis?
INTERPERSONAL LEVEL
Type of genre? Mode of communication? Spoken?
Written?
General purpose of the genre? My particular purpose?
Narrate, amuse, inform, request information, complain,
persuade?
Appropriate moods? Declarative, Interrogative or
Imperative Mood?
Identity as a writer?
Identity of my addressee?
Relationship between us? Distant? Close? Linguistic
choices to show this?
OUR PROPOSAL:
A COMBINED APPROACH
• Together with the process approach, the genre approach
can contribute to amplifying students’ writing
potentials.
• It can help students get rid of negative attitudes towards
writing.
• It offers specific feedback and correction in writing.
DRAWBACKS
• It is time consuming.
It requires knowledge of rhetorical patterns of
texts.
ADVANTAGES
• At the same time students learn the appropriate
language and the relationship between form
and communicative purpose, they use the
recursive processes of prewriting, drafting,
revision and editing to produce a text.
• It ensures that the text is seen from the writer’s
as well as from the reader’s perspective.
• Students can both improve their writing skills through
experiencing a whole writing process and gain
knowledge of the contexts in which writing happens.
• Students can gain careful control of language and use
the language in creative ways at the same time.
• It offers a variety of feedback techniques to
apply during any stage of the writing process.
It provides context for audience & purpose.
It increases learners’ awareness of the
conventions of writing.
• A combination of the process
and the genre approach that
keeps the strengths of each
approach can be extremely
beneficial.
GENRE BASED DESCRIPTIONS OF TEXTS APPLIED TO
TEACHING
• Select a text as an instance of a genre
• Identify its schematic structure by examining
grammatical features that realize field, tenor &
mode in each stage of the text.
• Draw attention to the key grammatical features that
create the genre & its stages.
SOME FAMILIAR GENRES
• Stories: narrative, recounts, observations, etc.
• Factual: reports, procedures, explanations etc
• Argumentative: expositions and discussions
etc
DISCUSSION GENRE
• Preview of Issue ^ Arguments For ^ Arguments
Against^ Recommendation
• Preview of Issue- introduce the issue to be considered
• Arguments For and Against- review the arguments in
favour and against
• Recommendation- indicates the view recommended
