110 Part II: Putting Your Lesson Together
You may not want to highlight every error, as this may leave a piece of writing
that reads well overall covered in disconcerting marks.
Many teachers gradually wean their students off the code in stages:
✓ Put a symbol next to the error
✓ Put symbols in the margin only for each line
✓ Give an overall assessment without symbols
The advantage of doing this is that the students gradually become more inde-
pendent and aware of the need to edit their own work. During this process
the teacher presents several compositions by other students so that the
whole class can practise editing together.
If your students are comfortable with it, you can encourage peer correction of
written work too.
Choosing written errors to work with
As it isn’t usually motivating to correct everything in an extended piece of
writing, you need to give some thought to which points are worth dealing
with and which aren’t.
Written work includes several areas that may need correction. These include:
✓ Style. This covers the right degree of formality and the presentation of
the work.
✓ Grammar.
✓ Vocabulary.
✓ Cohesion. There needs to be a linking of ideas with appropriate words
such as because, therefore and after that.
✓ Task completion. Consider whether the piece of writing has really ful-
filled the task that you set.At the top of the list of mistakes to correct,
many teachers put style. Whenever students write they should have a
reader in mind and reflect this in the degree of formality and the presen-
tation. Take the two pieces of writing in Figure 7-1 for example.
