Language Sensei

A Language Teacher's Journey

January 12, 2018
by leesensei
1 Comment

Adding Detail In Writing…Learning to Accessorize to Add Flare!

One of my Yr2’s came to see me at lunch. She is creative, energetic and outgoing – everything that I ask and very sincere in trying to improve her language skills. But she has been disappointed lately that she is not finding the ‘fully meeting’ in her presentational writing pieces.

“Sensei – I’m trying to hard to get to put in more details – but I keep getting ‘mixed up’ and feel jumbled in my thoughts.” She felt that she was so busy trying to ‘push her level of detail that what she was writing was not making sense. “How do I start?” she asked.

I struggled for a tip, a simple way to help her to understand how. Now I will add that this student is also a snappy dresser who melds her love of cos-play with her everyday wear. And it struck me that, like putting together an outfit, writing was a matter of adding ‘layers’ to basics too. So we talked about getting dressed. “Do you”, I asked, “put on your earrings, bracelets, jacket etc before you choose your basic outfit?” “No,” said my student, “I get dressed first.”

“Well,” I told her “This is just the same as writing – you ‘get dressed’ with a basic sentence – then you add some accessories.””But what  would I add?”  she asked.”What do you do when you choose an outfit?” “I accessorize” she said…Then I asked “What are our ‘accessories’ when we communicate?”…All of a sudden I saw it dawn on her. “Our follow-up questions...”.

And it dawned on me too. It’s not just enough to write on the rubric and say “try adding more detail.” I had to help them to do this in a logical and ‘understandable’ way. I had to more explicitly link what we do with ‘Wheel Of Detail‘ for interpersonal speaking to their writing too. With this in mind I went back to the entire class and talked about adding details using our follow-up questions as a guide.  We started with a simple idea (and written) sentence:

Kenji watched a movie.

If this is what Ken said he did, I asked, what would you want to know? And their follow-up questions included (1) why? (2) when? (3) who with? (3A) what are they like? (4) how? (5) where at? (6) how did they watch? Gradually the expanded sentence emerged.

(1)Because he really likes them, (2) last week on Tuesday at 4pm, (3A) tiny but cute Kenji and (3A) really funny (3) Naomi (6) quietly watched a (3A) very interesting movie (5) at a movie theatre in Shinjuku.

They then practiced in pairs – coming up with their own ‘accessories’ for another sentence and we debriefed them as a group. I saw many have a “I can do this…” or “Oh this is how…” moment.

Making more detailed and interesting sentences should not be hard. I had neglected to help them see the link from the questions we use when we speak to the written text. My students often talk now about ‘accessorizing’ their sentences…and as they emerge out of novice it has also led to more interesting written pieces…with more detail than before!

C

March 2, 2016
by leesensei
3 Comments

The “New” Feedback Rubrics – Part 1: Presentational Writing

My rubric journey has been a long and winding one. What started with rubrics modified off the French DELF program have now come a long way. Gone are the number descriptors – and now in their place – words to describe how fully meeting expectations the student work is. Also I have refined how I use the rubric. As I worked to implement more of them I realized  (in one of the ‘duh!’ moments) that the rubric is not only an effective way to communicate how a student has MET expectations but also as a way to give feedback and reinforce WHAT is key.

I owe a huge debt on these to Amy Lenord who first developed the checklist idea. Stop now and go read her post first – it sets the stage for the ‘feedback’ checklist portion of the rubrics.

Presentational Writing – The Rubric:  This is still evolving. I continue to tweak it to try to pull out what I want students to show me that they can do – and encourage them to do more. Fully Meets Expectations is my top criteria for 99% of mWriting-With-Checklist-Jan-2015-Copyy class, with “Exceeds” there for my heritage writers and the very cream of the second language crop. At Fully Meets a student is using current knowledge and tapping previously learned items. They are expressing themselves in a complex and varied style – pushing for subtlety and detail in their writing. Errors are still allowed to occur – a point that I feel encourages risk in writing.  A student who Fully Meets my expectation produces a piece that is easy to read, whose writing ‘flows’ (in a second language context) which means that transition devices and organization fully support the piece.  Minimally Meets for me is the ‘unit’ items – and at this level the student is showing me what they have mastered from the current unit but is generally not drawing heavily on past knowledge. A student, for me, generally falls between Minimally and Fully – and I usually find they have items selected from one or more columns.  At this point – with selections out of several columns I often use a +/- to show where they are. For example a “Meeting+” means that you are moving out of “Meeting” and starting on your way to “Fully Meeting”. A “Fully Meeting-” would be ‘not quite there but definitely out of the “Meeting” area. I believe that the +/- also serves to encourage/show students that they are ‘on a continuum’ of skill building.

The Feedback:  Here is where the real value is for me – the quick and easy way to add extra comments to the piece. Generally I found that I was writing the same comments over and over – and, borrowing from Amy’s idea, wondered if I could put together a written checklist. It is general enough to provide a ‘guide’ for a student and has room to allow me add specific points as well. Some of the checklist points reflect specific Japanese language items (such as ‘form’ – the difference between plain/formal forms for example) and others are more generic. I wanted to have the ‘For Future Pieces’ portion to be encouraging in nature which is why used words like ‘try’ and ‘review?’ to hopefully encourage the student to seek out assistance in these areas.

The rubric language is still not fully what I want – there are areas to improve it and make it more clear. But I like the mix of the ‘how you met’ and the ‘here’s some feedback’ that it provides.

Student Self-Evaluation First: This year I also started having the student participate in this process. At the end of the piece – be it a presentation or summative exam write – I ask the student to look at the rubric and check where they think the piece falls. I want them thinking about what I am looking for and evaluating how well they are meeting expectations. I find that most are quite aware of where there writing is and, using this style of rubric encourages growth in writing.

The link for the rubric is here if you wish – please credit based upon how much you borrow.

Next post – the Oral Interpersonal Rubric.

Colleen

 

 

 

 

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