National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages
Abstract
Most foreign language teachers would probably agree that
feedback on their students’ written work is essential, but what that
feedback should look like, and how it contributes to the development of second language writing skills is not always clear. This paper presents a pedagogical model for providing feedback and encouraging students’ uptake of feedback for future written work.
Developed in Arabic language content courses at the University of
Maryland, the model combines feedback on the content of a
response paper with feedback on linguistic form. Students are
required to engage with the themes of the course in their written
work, to solve problems with accuracy noted in their previous papers, and to incorporate new language suggested by the teacher, or noticed in the texts of the course. They then submit a writing improvement report that presents evidence from successive response papers to illustrate how their writing has improved over time. The model can be employed to develop writing skills in any foreign language, and is easily adapted for lower, pre-content levels
