Checklists are nothing new. The following idea is very simple but I thought I’d share it as it has had a positive effect in my writing classes.
When I worked on an EAP (English for Academic Purposes) course last year, students were required to complete and sign a checklist on the front of any assignment they submitted. It included statements such as ‘the work hasn’t been plagiarised’, ‘I’ve used at least 5 references’ etc. I imagine the idea was that students were forced to acknowledge their responsibility. It also gave students the opportunity to ask for clarification when it included something they were unsure about and avoid unnecessary errors.
Back in the world of ELT, I’d grown a little frustrated with students, particularly the teenagers, underperforming in writing tasks. In my opinion, many students were failing to produce their best work for the following reasons.
- Many ignored simple task instructions such as word limits.
- Many showed they understood input like how to write in paragraphs but didn’t use these features consistently when producing their own work.
- Young children and teens’ work often appeared rushed. It was clear they did not check their work for errors.
- Students weren’t trying to recycle the language we’d learned in class and often fell back on lower level grammar and vocabulary.
- Sometimes presentation was poor as students failed to realise or failed to care about the impression this makes.
Inspired by what I’d seen on the pre-sessional course, I decided to try out the idea of a checklist in order to eradicate some of these issues. Here is an example of a checklist that I used for a Cambridge PET B1 level story task. This example is from quite early in the course and therefore focuses on general skills and presentation.
In subsequent tasks, I adapted the checklist depending on what we had recently covered in class. For example, if we’d looked at the past perfect or past perfect continuous or adverbs I’d include them. I’d also try to deal with any common errors such as subject-verb agreement.
My aim was that students would have to think more carefully about the work they were submitting. If they were able to avoid such common basic errors this allows me to focus on more specific errors. I also hope that by using this type of checklist consistently throughout a course, learners are building their own internal checklist which they will use on exam day.
I think this can be used at higher and lower levels if adapted accordingly. Here’s an example answer sheet with a checklist for a PET B1 Story. Checklist
Love this idea! Will include it in my Czech classes. Thanks!
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Thanks Kamila. It’s great to hear that you plan to use it- I’d love to know how it goes.
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There are so many grammatical categories in Czech and we really need to challenge our learners because they’re preparing to study at universities here so this is a really good idea. I will let you know in autumn.
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I look forward to it.
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I have something similar that students have to do before they hand in an essay to me (I work in EAP) – I call it a ‘self-checking’ worksheet and it also has things like “I have used 1.5 line spacing” or the silly formatting things they forget to do. I wonder if I should add “This is the best work I can do” because most of them would probably be honest enough to tick ‘no’ because they’re just so busy with other things, sadly!
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Thanks for your comment Clare. I was quite surprised at how many students were honest enough to say no when asked if it was the best work they could do- it led to some interesting discussions at least!
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I think it’s a great idead!! I’ll use it in my classes.
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Amazing idea! I don’t normally do writing tasks with my students, but the idea of a checklist to make them think more carefully about the work they were submitting it’s applicable to other aspects too.
Thanks for the content!
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Excellent!
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I love the ideas, and I will surely include them in my classes
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Hi Geraldine,
Just to let you know that we’ve shortlisted this blog post for this month’s TeachingEnglish blog award and I’ll be putting up a post about it on Friday’s TeachingEnglish Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/TeachingEnglish.BritishCouncil, if you’d like to check there for comments.
Best,
Ann
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Thanks very much, Ann. I’ll keep an eye out for it.
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Hi Geraldine, I’m interested in when you usually give students the checklist. i.e. before or after they have performed the task. I think with some of my students it would also be important to vary the questions and perhaps to include one that would ideally be answered with “no” to discourage them just blindly circling yes for everything.
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Hi Jill, thanks for your comment. I would give them the checklist before the task so they have it to refer to. I like your point about varying the questions. It also works quite well if you use the checklist for peer reviews.
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