Best EL Lesson (Clarence Lee)

The best EL lesson I conducted was on narrative writing.

My pupils were very poor in English, and were at the tail end of the Sec 3 Express classes in a neighbourhood school. Nevertheless, they were intelligent and exuberant and generally interested in English lessons.

Using a combination of process and product writing, they were to produce a narrative essay on the topic of an impulsive decision by the end of 2 lessons.

In the first lesson, I played them a youtube video of a public awareness advertisement from the UK featuring teenage anti-social behaviour. The class became very excited and we talked about how things were similar or different in Singapore.

We then discussed impulsive decisions. We unpacked the question and established the demands of the question, which helped the students with a weaker command of the language. I asked them to think about what impulsive decisions we could write about, and we compiled a list of possible topics.

I then divided them into groups of 4 and told them to plan a story featuring an impulsive decision. They used a graphic organiser that helped them divide their story into paragraphs and plot the introduction, rising action, climax and conclusion. The better groups were given the chance to present the ideas to the class.

As homework they would produce the first draft of their essay individually. In the second lesson they would practice peer editing and a final draft would be ready by the next week. Due to their standard of English, many mistakes would not be found during peer editing, but it certainly was not a case of the blind leading the blind. Every student was able to at least make some corrections to another student's draft. I was happy to see that even low-ability students were enthusiastic enough to submit 6 page essays.

According to my CT, this combination of process and product writing produced essays far better than simply assigning a piece of writing as homework, with the very first draft to be submitted. Not only was the final product better but students tended to retain awareness of their mistakes and improve as they edited their own essays and those of their peers.

Marking in EL (Clarence Lee)

My marking experience in EL could be split into two categories: comprehension exercises and essays.

Comprehension exercises were easier to mark as we practiced peer marking in the classroom. I explained every answer to them to ensure that they understood why the answer was what it was. I nevertheless asked the students to submit their comprehension exercises to me so that I could check their corrections and mark the summary exercises.

Essays were much more difficult to mark by their very nature. Not only are they longer but marking is much more subjective. It did not help that the rubric for marking essays at the O-levels is vague and leaves plenty of room for the marker’s interpretation, which can be a good or bad thing. As I was only marking essays from one class and it was not formal assessment, this was not an issue and benchmarking was not practiced.

I told students that I would be grading them according to a sec 4 standard. The CT had long begun preparing the class for the rigours of the O-levels. Although the numerical grades were marked according to the O-level marking rubric, I wrote plenty of comments in the margins and praised them for their efforts. I pointed out the students’ strengths and weaknesses and the bulk of the comments focused on praising the good parts of their essays. For example, a student might score 14/30, but I would praise him for his logical use of plot structure.

Perhaps the biggest controversy in marking essays is whether to mark for what was taught in the lesson or to mark for grammar and other elements of writing as well. Although marking for what was taught in the lesson would have been much easier, my CT believed in marking every single grammatical error in the text and I followed this pedagogy and adhered to a consistent set of demands for the class. Nevertheless, my comments focused on what was taught in the lesson and praised them if they had achieved it. Although their scripts would be covered in green ink, I tried to mitigate the sting of this with praise for their efforts written in the margins.

15.3 Marking and dealing with errors in EL (Goh Wan Ru)

Marking compositions is rather tedious and time consuming, especially since I have a tendency to go back to the marked ones to check for consistency etc. After some trial and error I managed to come up with system that worked for me. First I will go through each question, writing down what the questions requires and some possible answers that I think students might provide. Following this, I will then take six student’s scripts that I know falls under the good, acceptable and poor category. After marking these six scripts, and providing a grade for them, I will then use it as a basis for my marking for the entire class. This is in order to standardise and allow for marking consistency with minimum biasness and errors on my part.
The students would have a marking rubric that they know I base my marking on, showing the breakdown of marks for both language and content. The student’s rubrics is based on the marking rubric that was provided by the school, but it was further broken down by myself and approved by my cooperating mentor, in order for the students to easily understand what is expected and required in their free writing. The rubric follows the O’level requirements closely, in order to train the students to be aware and look out for not only their content but more importantly their language since they would be weakest at this point in that.
Free writing marking is one of the most fun and yet hair raising activity and this is especially so for my normal academic students who are very creative and can provide the most amazing and some fantastical story line. That, combined with their poor grammar and vocabulary makes for hilarious yet stressful reads. Although it was mentioned above that a set of rubrics was provided for the students, it is also one that it largely helpful for the teacher, since in my case, I have a tendency to rationalise to myself whether or not the student deserves the particular grade awarded to them, or do they merit a few extra points for effort etc. Before I made use of sampling marking, I went through every set of scripts at least 4 times, and each time scrutinising and rationalising, and also correcting inconsistencies that I had indulged in. An easily understood set of rubrics also allows the student’s to have a clearer understanding of what they should look out for in their free writing component.

15.3 Marking and Dealing with Errors in EL (Francis Lee)

The nature of the assignment and the expectations that are spelt out for the students are two key considerations that determine my EL marking process.

For example, in my practicum school, there is a graded component (part of their final year mark) known as "News in Class". Students watch a clip produced by Channel News Asia that looks at a topical issue and they have to write a reflective piece based on the topic. Five questions are provided to the students and from these, they pick one to expound on. All five questions are crafted to resemble either an argumentative or discussion question.

If this was a free writing assignment, I would stick closely to guidelines contained in the marking rubrics issued by the MOE, and pay close attention to the presentation style and linguistic features of the essay when I am marking. But I am reminded of the fact that the intention behind this "News in Class" was to increase students' awareness and knowledge of current affairs. The idea is to get them to put their thoughts or opinions on paper. As the marker, I am more interested in what they have to say or think regarding the issue. I focus more on the level of maturity and quality of their ideas or insights.

When marking regular assignments, particularly composition, I always have the marking rubrics right by my side as I view it as my trusty guide in directing my marking. I first familiarized myself with the requirements laid out in each banding before I proceed with the marking. Personal experience and advice from more experienced teachers have taught me to trust in that inner teacher's voice that utters, "This student's work places him/her in the 15-18 banding". From there, the final mark is determined by scanning the paper one more time, and glancing over the amount of 'red' strewn all over the paper. With enough practice, by the time I arrive at the last sentence of a student's work, I have a strong inkling of the student's current standard.

I love writing my teacher's comments at the end of every paper because my feeling is that students generally appreciate the gesture, and look to the teacher's feedback to improve their writing the next time round. But I am usually drained and exhausted after marking out the nitty-gritty and linguistic errors (or strengths) of stacks of students' work. Long-term wise, I am not sure if I would have the time and energy to invest in this. Does anyone else have a quicker or different method of providing feedback to their students?

15.3 Marking and dealing with errors in EL (Sharalee)

The Secondary 3 Express students that I taught didn’t exhibit many glaring errors in spoken EL. During the debates which constituted a significant chunk of their CA2 grades almost all spoken fluently and with confidence.

It therefore came as a bit of a surprise to me that when grading their written work, which I first encountered in the form of argumentative writing, a significant proportion of the class was prone to (in some cases rather serious) errors in run-on sentences, unwieldy expression, and an inability to construct written paragraphs in the basic format of Point, Elaboration, Evidence and Reiteration.

Since the class struggled with the format of argumentative writing, my approach was to break one essay topic into segments (i.e. introduction, counter-point and rebuttal, supporting points, conclusion) and have students tackle each segment one at a time, over a series of lessons. During each lesson, after a short period of explicit teaching and discussion of the structure and content required in each segment, students were allowed to craft their paragraphs in class, and submit these for review. I could then collect them, and assess their writing (which came in small, easy to digest chunks instead of complete essays). Because the writing was short, it allowed me to provide each student with detailed written comments and feedbacks. During the marking process, I found it useful to keep a running list of the errors that the pupils were most prone to making. A pattern almost always emerges after awhile, and I used these to help decide which areas to revisit during the next class.

At the start of the next lesson, students would have their writing returned to them, and time allocated for them to go over the comments and feedback provided, ask questions related to these and clarify any doubts. As a class we would then review the most common areas for improvement by looking at anonymous samples of writing, taken from among the class. This is a useful trick because the students that I taught were fascinated with the opportunity of being given carte blanche to critique and learn from each others’ work. I would refer to samples that exhibited the error we were focusing on (e.g. weak reiteration at the end of a paragraph), as well as model samples taken from exceptionally well-written student work. Each sample could be dissected and discussed as a class, and students were then given time to rewrite their own segment of text, before progressing on to writing the next segment and so on. By breaking the sample written texts into small chunks, the pupils were more likely to be able to spot the errors or good examples that they could emulate.

This approach was viable while on teaching practice, because I had just one class of EL to teach. For full-fledged teachers, the amount of time required for marking might not be as readily available (several classes of bite-sized writing can still lead to enough to choke a teacher). Teachers could instead work on capitalizing on students’ tendencies to pay attention to the work produced by their peers when seeking to correct errors produced in EL writing.

Best Lesson

My best lesson conducted would actually be the simplest and most bite sized one, which was conducted with my Sec 3NA's. They had failed their common test which was based on a summary..... and I mean the whole class failed.. I kid you not! Upon taking over the class from the relief teacher, I found out that they do not read the question, as in there may be 3 parts to the question instead of just assuming that its one question, so they must be asking me for one part. So with regards to content factor that was the problem that had to be addressed. Language wise, there is little ability to rewrite sentences or points in their own words.

So I had to break down the summmary into 3 main parts. Firstly, one lesson on content, drilling the need to identify how many parts there are in a question, and thus what points are relevant. This had to be done slowly, with a spiral progression ranging from whats the point in a single sentence, to a small paragraph, and then to a harder paragraph. Slowly, they started to get the hang of it.

The second was on language. There is no way these kids were going to write fantastic summaries based on their own language ability. And previously, the highest in the class for language, was 3-5 marks. So I thought them to 'cheat', of course after checking with my HOD on whether this was allowed.

EG: The blue cow jumped high and over the moon.... becomes The cow jumped over the moon.

Simple cutting and rewriting. It may not score them fantastic marks on the language aspect, but at least they would get better or might even pass if they can edit and produce something in their own words.

Apparently, the last test conducted, half the class has been passing, and a few more just missing the passing grade, unless of course its some ego boosting story my HOD told me. Well, for now, better pass than fail.

15.1: Best Lesson Conducted (Kian Tiong)

One of the best lessons I conducted during TP was for a group of international students in their second year of the Integrated Programme, which is equivalent to Secondary Four in mainstream schools. This class was created as an extra pullout language enrichment lesson for these students (a mixture of Vietnamese and Chinese international scholars). These students came over to Singapore, joining as Secondary Three students only last year. Hence they have not encountered the English standard required by our local schools until recently. Their English language proficiency is similar to or lower than the NA stream in our mainstream schools. Hence they have much difficulty passing the essay writing assessments (which focus solely on the genre of argumentative essays). A major problem is incoherence in their writing due to the lack of organisation of ideas in their writing compounded by their weakness in the language. However, students are motivated to learn, asking questions whenever they were uncertain about something taught. In fact, they provided useful feedback that they would like to have more practise in the genre of argumentative writing (partly due to fear of failing GP as well). Based on their feedback, I decided to begin by helping them improve their essay organisation through focusing on the writing of individual paragraphs in an argumentative essay so as to first improve their coherence in writing.

In one of these lessons, students were first shown a PowerPoint which explicitly taught them about the components required in the introductory paragraph i.e. general statement, specific statement, definitions, thesis statement and main points of discussion. This was guided by what we learnt from Mrs. Josephine Phang that if students are uncertain or do not have prior knowledge, we need to teach them the basics before moving on to more challenging activities. After the deductive, explicit teaching exercise, a handout with four different introductory paragraphs was then given to students (adapted from authentic students’ essays with additional modification by me to improve coherence). They were then required to identify the different components of an introductory paragraph that they notice in each of these samples and explain the reasons for their choices. This exercise was guided by a mixture of the genre approach (students learn about language components specific to the argumentative essay) and also the inductive approach (as students were exposed to authentic examples of writing and then they were required to notice the language components used and explain their choices by themselves). After this exercise, students were given another handout, this time with four different introductory paragraphs again. However, these were adapted and modified from weak student essays that were relatively incoherent. In these samples, I had edited the grammatical errors in these paragraphs but left the flow of ideas intact in order to show students how incoherent organisation results in a weak argument. Students were then required to reorganise and rewrite these introductory paragraphs, trying to make their version as coherent and persuasive as possible. This exercise was guided by the strategy of process writing to ensure that students focus on a certain portion of the writing and work on improving it rather than conducting a full writing exercise where they make the same mistakes repeatedly (and the teacher has to mark the same mistakes repeatedly as well).

I consider this lesson successful because students demonstrated that they were able to correctly identify the different language components in the positive examples of introductory paragraphs and provide their own explanations for identifying these components, thus helping me to ascertain their understanding of the lesson. Also, after marking students’ rewriting of the weak sample paragraphs, I found that they were mostly able to improve the coherence and organisation of the original (despite the presence of grammatical errors). Hence the lesson’s objectives were met. At the end of the lesson, students also expressed that they now had a clearer idea of what was required when writing an introductory paragraph in an argumentative essay. This was possibly due to the way the worksheets were laid out in a table format so that students could easily write down their ideas and compare with the original paragraphs provided.