| Body | Stephanie Knight is the Language Technology Specialist for CASLS at the University of Oregon. This activity was developed to provide a systematic approach to helping intermediate-high and advanced-low Spanish learners improve their writing.
This activity draws students to focus primarily on their strengths when reflecting on written work rather than weaknesses. Such an approach allows students to be empowered by their language skills instead of discouraged by them. Furthermore, it allows language learners to know with confidence where their strengths lie before completing high-stakes assessments that involve choice of response. In completing this activity, students are engaged in metacognitive development and critical writing skills.
Modes: Presentational writing, Interpretive Reading
Objectives:
- Students will learn how to critically evaluate their own work.
- Students will learn how to identify specific strengths.
- Students will reflect upon learning.
- Students will make a concrete plan for improvement.
Resources: Portfolio of student work, highlighters in multiple colors, writing handout (in Spanish or English)
Procedure:
- Over the course of a unit of study, have students keep all written work in a portfolio of some sort. Given the wide-spread accessibility to mobile technology, we recommend using LinguaFolio Online in concert with the mobile app, LFO to Go (available for Android and iOS).
- Teach the students to evaluate their work using a Think Aloud (http://www.adlit.org/strategies/22735/) of an exemplar. Be careful to focus on form and function in addition to syntax. Though grammar is important, focusing on it too much will lead students to edit their work instead of evaluate it. A balanced approach to evaluation is best.
- After the Think Aloud is completed, walk students through grading the exemplar with a rubric. Make sure to cite specific evidence from the text when assigning a level of achievement.
- Next, tell the students to conduct an initial reading of their own work while thinking about the strengths and weaknesses that they see.
- After the students are done with the first read-through, they should read everything at least one more time and choose their three most prominent strengths and one opportunity for improvement using the writing handout (in Spanish or in English). Examples of each strength and the weakness should be highlighted in different colors for easy reference.
- Finally, students will use the highlighted texts to write a formal letter to the teacher in which they discuss their work and arrive at goals for the next unit of study. These goals must be directly related to the three strengths and one weakness. Before they write the letter, they should outline what they are going to say.
It is recommended that students conduct a similar analysis of work reflecting all communicative skills. While this specific task requires students to review writing samples only, it could easily be adapted to include samples of work reflecting each communicative skill. It would also be easy to adapt this activity to students with lower communicative proficiencies by permitting them to write the letter in their native languages.
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