Issue 8- May 2004
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Provincial Workshops
VTTN Quiz
VTTN National Conference
ELT Workshops
BANG ON!
Evaluation Questionnaire
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VTTN provincial workshops


February/March 2004
in Binh Dinh, Da Nang, Ho Chi Minh City, Khanh Hoa, Nam Dinh, Nghe An, Thanh Hoa, Thai Nguyen, Thua Thien Hue and Yen Bai.

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Day three tackled the issues of responding to students’ writing
Correction codes /symbols

Codes Meanings
WF Wrong form
WW Wrong word
T Wrong tense
Sp Wrong spelling
WO Wrong word order
P Wrong punctuation
V Wrong verb form
// New paragraph needed
Ø Not necessary
È You don't need a new sentence. Join up the idea
? I don't understand what you are trying to say
[ ] This part needs to be re-arranged
!! You really should know what's wrong here because
- weÕve just done it in class
- IÕve told you so many times
C/Gr Grammar/Collocation. Subject and verb do not agree
NA The usage is not appropriate
S/P Singular or plural form wrong
Prep Wrong preposition

Peer correction
Teachers do not have to correct all the mistakes in studentsÕ writing. We can use students themselves to correct each other. Students are very happy to help each other, and peer correction can encourage them to be independent of the teacher and learn from each other.

What to correct and what not to correct?
Teachers should not correct every mistake, but should decide what should be corrected based on the purpose of the writing piece and the focus of the lesson. If we correct everything we do not help students see what are the major mistakes and the minor mistakes.

Day three also focussed on generating
marking schemes for writing tests

Tips:
Some Guidelines
for Marking Writing

When marking writing, you should focus on two main areas:

1. Task completion Did the student answer the question/fulfill the task? For example, in a letter to a new friend, a high school student can describe his/her school, talk about when school starts or ends, or describe some activities the students are involved in. So, describing schools, and talking about starting and finishing times are examples of communicative functions. Before marking, analyse the task to see how many functions are needed in the task and allocate marks to each function based on its importance in the task. For example, if describing a student's school is the main function, it should receive more marks than other functions that are less important.

2. Language content includes fluency (is it understandable?) and accuracy, things like: tenses, linking words, spelling, vocabulary, prepositions, etc. Before marking, decide specifically on what language content is important and necessary for the task, list them, and then allocate marks to them according to what is important for the task. For example, a letter that includes describing a student's school as mentioned above must have such language content as simple present tense, vocabulary about schools, and numbers and times.

Make sure that marks are allocated equally to these two areas. If marks are out of ten, there should be 5 marks for Task Completion and 5 marks for Language Content.

For easy marking, design a marking scheme like this:

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