Hilarious Collaborative Classwork for Writing 20 October 2006
Posted by neny in ESL/EFL Info, For my students.trackback
The other day, I was so confused looking for a method to engage my students in a writing activity in my IC class. Writing is usually painstaking both for students and teachers. It’s painful for students because it requires more efforts and energy to come up with ideas, check the spelling, think about the content, etc. in such a limited time like 20-30 minute slot of an IC class meeting. It’s also painful for teachers because once the essays are submitted, we have to struggle to correct and edit them. My IC class has at least 27 students and on top of other tasks that I have, correcting papers is not a task I’m excited about.
So, that morning as usual I came across Fenny Kristianti, one of my colleagues, and check the answers of the that day’s IC textbook exercise. We usually do this before the class, just to make sure that we give the same answers to students. We also discuss some techniques and methodology for teaching that day. When I talked to her about the problem of writing classwork that day, she came up with a brilliant idea, which she had applied it the week before.
For the purpose of naming, I will call the method as ’round-robin’ writing. Students form a group of 3-4 people and each group is given a piece of paper and a topic to write. The group then discusses the first sentence of the essay/story for 3-5 minutes and write the first sentence. When the time is up, the group transfers their paper to the next group. And the process is repeated again. It goes until the paper returns to the original group. The class then reads together the story/essay. Together, they correct the grammar/spelling and evaluate the content.
So I used the method for two of my IC sessions: news and tips writing. And the results are wonderful. The students came up with very funny fake news and some tips “essential “for the life of a college student in our campus. The most important thing from the perspective of language learning is the students are very motivated in doing the writing task because the success of the essay depends on their collaborative efforts and they particularly like how the essay/paper turned out to be very hillarious. They also learn to evaluate their own piece of essay in terms of mechanics and content. Please read their work and give your comments!
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Hi there,
I once tried that too in my writing class this trimester. It was also fun! ^_^
BTW, just a quick comment, the term we use is “round-table” instead of “round-robin”. I got the handout and I’d be more than happy to share it with you (in case you’re interested)
FYI, round-robin is used for speaking whereas round-table is intended for writing.
-Meylia H. Tio
>>> Thanks, Meylia. I was not sure about the term myself.
Mbak,
Menulis kan kerja individu kan?.
Jadi ,bagaimana , seorang mahasiswa bisa memperoleh jam terbang yang tinggi ? Bagaimana comment nya mengenai F7 spellchecker? Apakah masih relevant?
——————-
Mas Ari,
Menulis memang kerja individual tapi dalam level mahasiswa IC1 saya, yang notabene masih beginner dalam soal menulis, support grup menjadi sangat penting karena selain ide-idenya jauh lebih banyak (otak bareng2 gitu..), ada semacam bantuan utk peer editing. Peer editing ini membantu sekali meningkatkan skill individu utk mendapati kesalahan-kesalahan grammar maupun spelling dalam sebuah tulisan.
F7 spellchecker juga bagus, tapi ya itu, kalau kata-katanya sudah betul spellingnya tapi artinya bukan yang dimaksud (misalnya maunya nulis ‘even’ tapi keketik ‘ever’ — dua-duanya betul spellingnya) F7 tidak akan bisa mengenali. Masih diperlukan manual checker utk kasus-kasus macam ini.
BTW, kabar Papua gimana…makasih udah mau comment ya, Mas.