Positive Effects of Using Correct Writing Strategies - Research Paper Example

Positive Effects of Using Correct Writing Strategies For an ESL student, writing is one of the most difficult but essential thing. The level of writing skill determines whether ESL student are successful or not to proceed with studies in university. At least, for most ESL student, weak writing skills have led them fail to go into university. Actually, writing skill is improvable, if student focus on improving their writing strategies. This essay will take about positive effects of using correct writing strategies, such as doing Inkshedd, joining in peer feedback, and focusing on using grammar correctly. He essay will also focus on how these writing strategies helped me. Mistakes are part of learning and should thus be taken positively. Student can assess their mistakes and those of their peers and learn from the experience. However, the learning process occurs when correcting the mistakes. The correction process should involve giving positive feedback, which enlightens the learner on the areas that require improvement. There are different types of mistakes that learners of a second language can make. Some errors are serious to an extent that they hamper communication. This happens when the learner is incapable of constructing comprehendible sentences. The main errors that make communication through writing impossible are mainly grammatical errors, which can be corrected. There are varying strategies that can be used by teachers to correct learners. In my leaning inkshedding and peer review turned out to be very helpful and enabled me learn how to write correctly. Inkshedding could help students learn a language since it enables them realize the best strategies to use in writing to communicate their idea to others effectively. In most cases, learners are unaware of their mistakes and require someone else to help them identify and correct the mistakes. On the one hand, inkshedding helps the ESL to communicate with teacher, and teacher is able to give valuable comments that enable the students identify their weaknesses and improve their writing skills. Additionally, inkshedding enables the teacher to motivate the learners without making them feel anxious. After identifying their mistakes, the students are able to correct them even on their own. According to W. Susan, (2001)"Teacher can get an immediate glimpse into what each student thinking, this is more useful than the limited amount of feedback one receive from few students who is just routinely talking." Indeed, whenever I get my inkshed back, I see many valuable comments made by the instructor. These comments motivate me to learn more and make me realize that using inkshed for learning is a good idea. I get to learn the areas that I am good in and those that I need to change to improve my writing skills. On the other hand, Inkshedding always lets students have direct access to what their peers are thinking. According to Wyche-Smith, (n.d.) "Students regularly express their appreciation to one another for a good class discussion, prod members who hold back, ask questions they may not otherwise, and tell stories too personal to share aloud." Sometimes, I think hard, and realize I have no idea about a topic. However, when I read a peer’s inkshed, my mind opens up and I am able to understand a topic better. Inkshedding is taking low risk because grammatical and spelling mistakes are allowed. Therefore ESL student need not to worry about too much details when they brainstorm. Therefore, inkshedding can help bring ESL student into English context much quickly. It helps students open their mind. Peer feedback is a more efficient way to revise as compared to make individual corrections after finishing a draft. This is because student can easily know what their mistakes are when helped to identify them by their peers. I did a peer feedback work last week, and my mind and skills changed a lot after finishing this work. When I go back to home, I cannot help reviewing my peers’ feedback. Whenever I look at it, I am able to identify the errors that I made in my first draft. After receiving the feedback from my peers, I decided to delete some sentences, which were erroneous or made little sense. This improved the quality of my work. According to Stagg, (2010) “When students receive feedback while they are writing, they are more inclined to use it to revise and edit their drafts than they would be if they received the suggestions on a graded, polished copy." Additionally, students also have an opportunity to try out the suggestion in their writing, to allow for meaningful application of they have learned from the feedback. The practice of peer feedback not only provides students an opportunity to enhance learning result and but also provides staff with an opportunity to assess the progress of students as a cohort in real time. For example, according to Meyer, et al., (2009) "Peer feedback allows a shift of focus from product to process which can enable the revelation of otherwise tacit knowledge and therefore afford staff the opportunity to test understanding of threshold concepts, ways of thinking, acting, talking, and students’ sense of scholarly identity." Because grammar entails use of essential rules for writing, without correct use of these rules, writing would sounds incoherent. It is a very significant thing that ESL student should focus on grammar. I failed to pass ESL145 (English as second language) courses because I made several grammatical mistakes in my final exam. Some student may believe that having significant ideas is more important for writing than achieving correct grammar for writing. This is because most instructors emphasize on the importance of having great ideas in writing and ignore the importance of grammar in writing. It is true that teacher seldom teach ESL student about grammar issues. However, grammatical mistakes are easily noticed when people evaluate a piece of writing. According to C. Duncan, "when we make twenty remarks on a student's paper, only one of which is a response to idea and nineteen of which correct spelling and grammar." Use of correct grammar enables the reader to relax and take in what you are trying to communicate. When there are errors, it makes the reader focus on your grammatical mistakes instead of what you are trying to communicate. Therefore, focus on grammar is necessary, because when people make grammatical mistakes, they are likely to draw the reader’s attention away from the content of the writing. When decide to take ESL 145 in second time, I paid more attention and put more efforts in learning grammar rules. Consequently, I passed ESL courses and managed to join university. I used to believe that grammar is not important, because some of my friends misled me to believe that people can write well without learning grammar rules. Definitely, people do not need to worry about grammar for their first language. However, this does not mean that people do not need to worry about grammar when they are studying second language. Additionally, English is also a second language for my interviewee. She told me that writing is a best way to learn about English. He advised me that writing could push people to think in English, which enables them to make effort in using correct grammar rules. Like demonstrated above, learning strategies used by teachers and learners determine how fast a learner manages to master a language. The mentioned-above is just my own experience, but it helped me get improvement in term of writing. I want to share those experiences with ESL student in order to help them get better way for improving their writing skills. References Meyer, J., Ward, S., & Latreille, P. (2009). Threshold concepts and metalearning capacity . International Review of Economics Education, 8(1), 132-154. Stagg, S. (2010). Improving Student Writing:Using Feedback as a Teaching Tool. Research Monograph, 29, 1-14. Wyche-Smith, S. (n.d.). Everything You Wanted to Know About Your Students' Response. Retrieved Nov 12, 2012, from http://www.evergreen.edu/washcenter/resources/acl/c3.html Read More