I took two pieces of end-term evidences to review the results. The first was the final draft of the research paper, which supposedly was written with a lot of time given to planning, research, and feedback. 22 students handed in their research paper; two of these were plagiarized and so they were not included. The second evidence was a sheet of paper that contained final thoughts about the course, including their self-evaluation. I used this evidence as it was more likely to be something the students wrote without planning and without much revising; thus it was more likely to produce errors that had not been thought about or corrected, and also more likely to show exactly where improvement might be found. 18 students handed in their final thoughts, including the two students who had plagiarized their research paper.
The points I concentrated on were the ones we worked most on in class. They were words and structures that are commonly misspelled or written wrongly. During the semester we worked on spelling lists 8 times, occasionally changing or introducing new words; we worked on "false friends" four times; we did direct work on understanding the use of "it", and we did work on transfer errors four times. At times I gave "extrinsic motivation" by giving chocolates/lollies to those students who got all the spelling correct in a day's quiz. I had also given explicit and individual feedback about words and structures that were often repeated in a piece of work, via the feedback form which had become so laborious by the end. Thus, the words and structures we worked most on were:
- Spelling: ability, consequence, tourism, environment, government, system, enough, through, communicate, writing, business, Mexican (or any other nationality or language), complete, language, which, with, recommend, beginning, committed, consciousness, slipped, referred, dissatisfy, unnecessary, disappointed, exciting, foreign, excellent, written, opportunity, possibility, official
- "False friends": compromise/commitment, actual/current, assist/attend, approve/pass, career/course, studies, major; direction/address, population/people, costumes/customs, execute/carry out, embarrass/pregnant, scientific/scientist, politic/politician
- Transfer: know/meet people, learn too much, as me/like me, get relax, [object] likes [subject]/[subject] likes [object], difficult (as a verb), [subject] are millions, the first time + present tense, for improve or to improving, ask to someone, on + month/date, misunderstoods, stablish, mayority, other/others, people is, plural adjectives, the use of "it", subject+verb+indirect object+direct object, placing the verb before the subject (eg. exists a problem)
Apart from reading through for enjoyment (first) then evaluation purposes (second), I then read them through specifically looking for these words or points of structure. I confess I probably didn't pick up every use of the word "with", and I didn't note every correct use of the subject-verb construction. However, it was obvious that, at least on these points which we had worked on several times during the semester, there was marked improvement in the majority of those actually used. A number of structures or words, such as "slipped", "referred", "get relax" and "embarrass/pregnant", were not used in either text and so could not be evaluated in any real way.
With regard to spelling:
- 9 students wrote "consequence" correctly; there were no misspellings
- 1 used "tourism" correctly; no misspellings
- 6 used "environment" correctly; no misspellings
- 3 used "government" correctly; no misspellings
- 2 used "system" correctly; no misspellings
- 3 wrote "enough" correctly; no misspellings
- 1 wrote "through" correctly; 2 misspelled it
- 1 wrote "communicate" correctly; no misspellings
- 10 wrote "writing" correctly; no misspellings (it is worth noting that at the beginning of the semester, 6 wrote it incorrectly in their first piece of writing)
- 3 wrote "business" correctly; no misspellings
- 10 used the capital letter for nationalities and languages such as Mexican and English; 3 did not use the capital letter. In this case all three students produced both correct and incorrect examples of it.
- 3 wrote "language" correctly; no misspellings
- 5 wrote "which" correctly; no misspellings
- I noted that 3 people wrote "with" correctly, although the word may have occurred correctly more times and I didn't notice it; 1 student misspelled it three times.
- 2 wrote "recommend" correctly; no misspellings
- 6 wrote "beginning" correctly; no misspellings
- 1 wrote "committed" correctly; no misspellings
- 2 wrote "unnecessary" correctly; no misspellings, although 1 student wrote "unneeded"
- 3 wrote "excellent" correctly; no misspellings
- 2 wrote "written" correctly; no misspellings
- 4 wrote "opportunity" correctly; no misspellings
With regard to "false friends":
- 1 used "commitment" correctly; 1 used "compromise" wrongly
- 2 used "current" correctly
- 1 used "major" correctly
- 2 used "people" correctly
With regard to transfer:
- 1 used "like" correctly; 1 used "as" wrongly
- 1 used "in + month/date" correctly; 2 used it wrongly with "on"
- 3 used "other/others" correctly; 2 used it wrongly
- 1 used "people is" wrongly
- 2 used the plural adjective correctly; 2 used it wrongly (negatives effects)
- 2 used "learn a lot" correctly
- Every student produced correct examples of the verb + subject; 6 students produced incorrect examples, including 1 student who repeatedly wrote the subject before the verb (10 times)
- 1 student used the incorrect structure of subject+verb+indirect object+direct object.
- 10 students used "it" correctly; 9 students used "it" incorrectly. 7 of these 9 also used it correctly.
From all this data, I see that in general there was a marked improvement in spelling and structures that reflect transfer issues, and some possible improvement in the false cognates. There was only one student who produced more errors in his work than positive points, not including the student who produced 10 errors of the same type (subject-verb).
I was pleased to see that a lot of the correct spelling was actually produced in the final thoughts and not just in the research paper. This seemed to indicate that even when not concentrating so hard on producing a correct document, many of the rules of spelling and avoiding transfer had sunk in to a good extent. I consider that the student who wrote "whit" 3 times in the one text probably has fossilized in that spelling item, and the student who produced 10 errors of "verb+subject" may also have fossilized, although she had improved in other areas of spelling.
It seems to me that the feedback form I used, while tedious for me because of the number of students in the group and the number of texts used with it, was extremely useful for the students; and I imagine that some (although not all) may even go back to these in the future in order to keep working on those points even more. No-one complained that I was being too harsh; in fact one said that I should "be more rude". I think that students in an advanced situation, looking at possibilities of studying internationally, are really seeking useful feedback on their work, particularly when, as I mentioned in a previous post, "I understand" (because I speak Spanish and I know what you meant to say) "but I don't like it" (because that's not how it should be said in English) - not because "I don't like you", but because "I like you and I want you to improve".
I consider that motivation is still a key factor in students' improvement, and I also think that the feedback form is a way of keeping the students motivated, because they enjoy finding out what was good and not-so-good about each piece of work they produced. It's a bit like getting a letter in the mail. Even students who, at times, did badly on a particular text, might have been disappointed with themselves, but they didn't get discouraged enough to drop out; on the contrary, some worked harder at the end to bring their score higher.
That's all for now. If I can think of other observations I'll put them in the comment section of this post. :)
