Watch Clare talk about one method she uses with an OHP (overhead projector) and OHT sheets (overhead transparencies). What do you think? Do you get your students to peer correct and edit? Leave a comment below!
For ideas on the process writing approach, have a look at our article here:
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/approaches-process-writing
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Comments
Lo- and hi-tech approaches to peer correction
I really like this idea. Even without an OHT, it can work almost as well with pencil and paper. Once students have edited each other's work, I collect the writing and blu-tack each piece of paper to the walls for different groups to read and comment on.
If resources allow, it can work really well outside the classroom using a wiki.
Just as an aside, I laughed out loud when you said "Any problems, you can hit them right away!"
Peer correction
I've read papers on peer correccted writing programmes from around the world. There does appear to be a tendency for them to be less successful in more patriarchal, heirarchical cultures but they're still very effective nonetheless.
A good incentive for some learners is to grade their assessments according to how similar they are to their teacher's, i.e. the more similar the marks and/or feedback, the higher the mark. I think this drives home the point that it's very important to be able to assess your own and others' writing, i.e. developing language awareness. Somewhere between 25 - 50% seems to be appropriate.
A great idea
I regularly use peer correction in writing activities with both younger learners and adults. However, rather than using an OHP, they work directly on their peers' work or on a photocopy of it. With adult classes I ask learners to think up six or so specific assessment criteria that they all agree would be the most important for the assignment/task. They work in pairs and assess two other students' work giving a mark on a scale and writing the reasons why.
I've found that just knowing that their classmates are going to read their work makes learners put a lot more effort into writing. The assessment criteria helps them to think more analytically and critically about their own and others' work and over a relatively short period of time, their ability to organise and structure their compositions and use language more allusively and appropriately. The role of the teacher in all of this is pretty minimal, however, learners do appreciate some general assessment from their teacher at the end.
Peer assessment works very well in Moodle. There's a peer assessment asignment type plugin in the plugins repository which is much simpler and easier to use than the Workshop module.
Peer correction on the board
If your students are a bit 'rough' you could project the texts straight onto the whiteboard. Others can then take turns to correct on the board and you avoid potential OHT vandalism.
With younger students or students who use a diffferent script you can get them to put the OHT on a sheet of lined paper to help with writing.
Sally
Thank you very much for sharing this video. I have been using this strategy with my students (tertiary level) for a couple of years. I now want to investigate its efficiency. I want to conduct a study on it but I do not know how to go about it. I have got several questions on my mind regarding what I want to investigate. However, it seems I don't have enough literature on this topic. Could you recommend "good" literature that discusses the matter (Peer editing and correction) intensively and extensively?
Cheers