One approach:
1) Interview the student:
- What's the topic? (Assignment sheet)
- When is it due? (i.e. what stage of writing is the student in: brainstorming? Organizing? Developing? Proofreading?)
- If in the proofreading stage: Has the student proofread yet? How? For what errors?
- Does the student have a particular error/structure she wants help with? (A particular error instructors have found in past essays, or a sentence-level requirement of the essay)
2) Analyze the student's pattern of errors for one or two paragraphs:
DON'T CORRECT THE ERRORS
In the margins (of one or two paragraphs), write the type of error (vt, vf, wf,..... )
3) Decide what to work on: not line-by-line, but by type of error
4) Teach something about that error type, using 1 – 2 errors in the paper as a starting point
5) Have student apply what you taught her to another error of that type in the paper. Let the student find the error on her own.
6) Write down what the student has learned (on yellow/pink reporting form, folder, or preposition log)
7) Next time, check to see that she proofread for those errors. '
What Can You Teach ESL Students in 15 Minutes?
Rule-driven:
| Type of error |
What can be taught |
Proofreading Strategy / Exercises |
| Vt (verb tense) |
- When to use which vt
- Time expressions which "force" a specific vt (yesterday, since)
|
- Wiggly line under time expressions
- Underline main verbs
|
| Vf (verb form) |
How to make a specific verb form:
- irregular past tense
- pres. Progressive (am reading)
- present perfect (have gone)
- passive
- verb patterns (make s/o do something
- gerunds/infinitives (I enjoy reading)
- verb recognition (I am agree with you)
|
- Underline main verbs and check form
- Do exercises in Azar or other book
- Look for problem verbs
|
| sva (subject-verb agreement |
|
Circle subjects, underline verbs, check agreement |
| art (articles) |
See below |
Box around nouns, check articles. Exercises in binders. |
Sentence boundary errors:
|
|
|
| frag and rts |
fragments and run-together sentences |
Look for subordinators, circle subjects and underline verbs |
| wf (word form) |
Example: He is a success man. |
Look for problem words in essay and check |
| Ss (sentence structure) |
Complicated! Case-by-case:
- comparisons
- adjective clauses
- noun clauses
- parallelism
- predication
- word order
|
Case-by-case |
| Not Rule-Driven |
| Non-idiomatic/ Wc (word choice) |
|
Case-by-case:
- Write in Preposition / Idiomatic Phrases Log
- Check paper for repeated use of this expression
|
| Prep (preposition) |
|
- Use Preposition Log to write down errors and corrections.
- Proofread specifically for these errors.
- Do preposition exercises in gray binders
|
Created by Amy Sobel |
