R 140 F

In my essay I would like to focus on one of the productive skills, writing. During my first year of teaching at a secondary technical school I had to realise that my students have got difficulties in writing in English. ‘Well’, I said, ‘never mind, however long process it is, I will teach them how to write compositions properly.’ But after reading their writings, I discovered that I have got a more serious problem than my students. I have never been taught how to correct, evaluate and grade them. So I am going to deal with the correction and evaluation of students’ writings in details. I think this project will be a good opportunity for me to set up my own system of correcting and grading their written works.

First of all I would like to point out the differences between written and spoken English. Speakers have a great range of possibilities to express what they intend to say. They can vary the intonation and the pitch, indicate interest or lack of it, speak up or slow down. In a face to face interaction they can use a lot of facial expressions, like gestures or body language. And they are always provided with a feedback from their listeners. While speaking even native speakers tend to make mistakes. They hesitate and often change the subject of what they are talking about. They rather use simple structures than complex ones. On the other hand the writer sometimes does not get any feedback at all. Body language, intonation or stress cannot be used in a written text. Writers have to pay attention to grammar or stylistic techniques etc. In other words any piece of writing has to be planned beforehand and thought about carefully. (J. Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman 1993, p 52-53)

To demonstrate my ideas I will use the compositions of my first year students, aged 15, at Hunyadi Mátyás Secondary Technical School, in Székesfehérvár. They are pre-intermediate students. They had to introduce their hometowns for which they were given 35-40 minutes, and they were allowed to use dictionaries as well.

At first I am going to look at the correcting techniques by means of one of the compositions. ( I am not using the original version, but a typed one, for the sake of easier legibility. )
Hometown Gábriel Ágnes 1.a
My hometown is Székesfehérvár. This is a big town, where a lot of people live in. In the town there are a lot of shops, factorys, buildings, and cars. The cars are polluting the natural. Székesfehérvár is a famous town. There are a lot of schools in the town. These schools are very big. The students are learning a lot of subjects in the schools. In the Székesfehérvár more the secondary schools, than other towns. These secondary schools are very difficults, because the students are learning a lot of. In the town there are two college : Kandó Kálmán- and Kodolányi College. The most people don’t like for the city, because is very expensive. In the shops there are a lot of product. The most people haven’t got any money. The mans are very poor. But in the town there are exceptions.
I like this town because in the city are my friends, parents (although they divorced), my school....in a word: I like this town, because I’m here living.