Should we proofread our writing?

A case study

Adèle Lilly is a Senior Lecturer at Massey University College of Education, lectures in the Graduate Diploma of Teaching (secondary) programme and is also the region's advisor for International Languages with particular responsibility for the NCEA.

The Ministry of Education recently released a report on quality teaching which states "the evidence shows the role of effective feedback as formative assessment to be one of the strongest influences on student learning" (Ministry of Education 2003: 89). This article reports on a process for working with students to ensure that the feedback given is indeed effective.

The Japanese language teacher at a local high school approached me to help her improve the writing of her Year 11 students. Early in term two, as part of the school internal examinations, the students had completed a practice piece of writing for the externally administered Achievement Standard 1.5: Write text in Japanese on a familiar topic (NZQA, 2003). For this question they are required to choose one of four topics and write about 150 kana (Japanese script). Of the nine students, four received a Not Achieved grade, three Achieved, one Achieved with Merit and the ninth is a native speaker who will not be entering for NCEA. The teacher's comments about the student writing were that instructions had not been followed, there appeared to be little thought given to the planning of the writing and basic errors abounded.

In deciding how to respond to the teacher's request, I drew on Guskey (2002) in his work on evaluating professional development. He advocates that professional development needs to be linked to the desired result of improved student outcomes. In the case reported above, the broad outcomes are for improved written work in the Japanese language classroom. The Ministry of Education Curriculum Facilitator for Languages summarised Guskey's five levels of professional development and suggested some questions to use to aid such discussions with teachers. This summary was further adapted for use by advisors at School Support Services at the Centre for Educational Development at Massey University College of Education and formed the basis of the discussion with the teacher.

The first point to establish in this discussion was what was currently happening in the classroom in relation to

1. curriculum learning outcomes;
   
2. teaching and learning, planning and reporting;
   
3. learner self-knowledge and learner responsibility.
   

The answers to these questions were not formally recorded at the time but should in the future become part of a departmental record that covers planning for better student outcomes as per the National Administration Guidelines which require schools in their charter to focus on targets for improving student outcomes (Ministry of Education 2002).

The immediate need was to address the writing of the students. The discussion was useful in that it highlighted the need for a new process when giving feedback to students. Usually when giving feedback on student writing, the teacher would correct the work and point out errors. This time, however, she wanted them to learn from those errors. The students needed to become more aware of the learning that was occurring and to take ownership of that learning. The following process was then developed.

Improving Writing with Japanese Language Students

The process involves focusing on four key questions, each with it's own plan of action.

Question 1: What are the desired outcomes?

• What does good Japanese writing / sentences / essays look like?
  
• What can we do to improve our writing?
  
• Should we proofread? EXPLAIN.

Question 2: How do we know that students have achieved the desired outcomes?

• Ask students to individually (then in pairs) 'improve' a piece of writing.
  
• Share all improvements as a class (give lots of praise and encouragement as they give their ideas)
  
• As a class summarise and re-jig the answers to those first questions under Question 1 above. This could be done as a brainstorm.

Question 3: Can the students apply the process to new situations?

Question 4: What next?

Eight Year 11 students answered the following questions:

What does good Japanese writing / sentences / essays look like?

Responses included using

• a variety of structures and vocabulary, e.g 
  
• proper particles, joined sentences, polite language / formal ;
  
• full sentences ;
  
• appropriate structures (STPOV) ; and
  
• having 'no crossouts'.

How can we improve our writing?

Common responses were about using more vocabulary / kanji; having more than one Level 6 grammar point; practising sentence structures and accuracy of 'spelling'.

Should we proofread? Explain.

Responses to this question concentrated on the need to have accurate 'spelling'; correct use of particles; script formation; accurate grammar and a variety of vocabulary. One student obviously thought this was a question that should not even be asked as the reason for proofreading given was "Duh - to make sure you don't miss things out, to correct things" (Student A)

The discussion that followed allowed all responses to be shared with the whole class. Some points were clarified by the teacher, including the role of particles, and students were encouraged to think WHY a certain particle would be used in different situations. The assessment criteria for the achievement standard were then re-visited in the light of the discussion. The teacher has the following to say about how the discussion was linked to the criteria for the Achievement Standard

This led on quite nicely to explain DEVELOPMENT. I explained a little about PIE (Point, Illustrate, Example) and SEX (Statement, Explanation, eXample). They mentioned that they use this in English so it was not entirely new to them. I then suggested that if they want SUBSTANTIAL DEVELOPMENT they should be aiming to give 3 sentences, using PIE/SEX, for each piece of information asked for in the exam question. I asked them for examples of errors and they came up with spelling, kana script and particles. I mentioned that they must include some kanji in any piece of writing and that they must proofread their own writing to eliminate silly little errors. (Cheryl Brownlee, Personal Communication, August 2003)

Note: The 'PIE' and 'SEX' referred to are techniques to help students structure their ideas and paragraphs logically.

Students were then asked the original three questions once more. This time there were many more comments to every question with students being much more specific about the kinds of language required to meet the criteria. Comments included:

Make it readable, write bigger, use more kanji, wide use of verbs, neatness, using kana in the correct place, no repetitiveness, learn more about particle placement, right amount of kana, meet the requirements, do my own private writing practice, learn PIE/SEX and STPOV, plan things, use a draft, learn from our mistakes. (Ibid, Brownlee)

Those first two parts of the process had taken a whole classroom period. The next day the teacher checked to see how much the students remembered about the initial discussion and to see if they could apply their skills to a piece of writing. She handed out a piece of student writing from the recently administered practice examination, which included the 1.5 Achievement Standard (NZQA, 2003). They were to read the requirements for the chosen topic and then the student's answer. They were then asked to improve a section of this writing by themselves, keeping in mind what had been discussed the day before. The piece of writing had not met the requirements for 'Achieved'. The students worked on improving the text by themselves, then in pairs. These improvements were shared with the whole class on the board and included some that the teacher had missed in her original marking! Looking at someone else's work allowed the students to identify areas for improvement and, with the teacher's help, they were able to 'correct' and alter the Japanese appropriately.

The next step was to give hem back their own work and encourage them to re-write with the aim of improving their grade. By this time it was the end of the lesson and the end of the week. The task to re-write was set for homework and unfortunately only five of the eight students did this. Of those five, three students improved their grade (one from Not Achieved to Achieved; two from Achieved to Achieved with Merit) and two stayed on the same grade (Achieved and Achieved with Merit). Though in some cases the writing did show signs of improvement, on reflection the teacher decided that it might have been better to ask the students to re-create the writing rather than work with the original. This was because several students had merely written out their work again correcting the highlighted errors from the teacher without adding new ideas or developing existing ideas. Alternatively the teacher could have noted errors in the margin with a 'dot' instead of highlighting the whole word or phrase in order that the students themselves find the areas for improvement.

The teacher and students alike found this process successful in that it required the students to take a closer look at their own work. The students will be encouraged to reflect on each piece of writing in this manner from now on. The effectiveness of this process on student learning can be further evaluated from the results of the writing tasks in the NCEA examinations at the end of the school year.

Acknowledgements

Cheryl Brownlee, Teacher in Charge of Japanese, Tamatea High School, Napier