REFLECTION+ON+WRITING+ASSESSMENT+SKILLS+WORKSHOP

**REFLECTION ON WRITING ASSESSMENT SKILLS WORKSHOP ** I attended the workshop that is arranged by British Council in Ambassador Hotel on 28 March 2012. The speaker of the workshop was Rama Mathew who is a instructor at Delhi University. The workshop was aiming to teach or develop teacher’s writing assessement skills. In brief the main topic of it was how to assess writing effectively. As assessement and giving feedback directly related with each other the workshop was also containing the issue of giving correct feedback. Mathew started the workshop by mentioning about the similarity of the problems of Asian countries about English. She said like Turkey and most Asian country India has also problems to become competent in speaking and writing. I had not known anything about problems of another countries about English before. This was the first time when I learned problems of different countries about English. I think India may have similar problems with our country about speaking but it is not the same with the issue of writing. Since I think Turkish students are mostly good at writing. The second thing that I heard for the first time was assessment myths. According to one of these myths creating a competitive environment among students makes them write more effectively but I do not think so. Since, I think instead of creating them a competitive environment, giving them a rational reason to write or making them write about something that they are interested in is more effective. Rewarding them may also be a tecnique to make them write more effectively. There was an issue in the workshop that is always debated in our department. The speaker asked us if our students lose points when they made grammatical errors in their writing works or not. The answer for this question was ‘Yes’. I think sometimes reducing points may be the right thing for a teacher in some situations but mostly it is not fair. Since for example a university that using English as medium of instruction like ours when you are teaching a subject related to engineering it is not fair to reduce points for grammar mistakes. It is also the same in literature or eds courses in our department. I think if you are using language as a tool rather than an aim you should be assess content not grammar. In the workshop I also learned many things about giving correct feedback. On that day we had not cover feedback topic in our class yet. After this workshop covering feedback topic also in our class was very beneficial for me because I listened the same topic from two different and quality person and this absolutely will effect me when I become a teacher. The speaker also mentioned about the elements of writing when telling us assessing. I had knowm these elements beforehand but it helped me to refresh my knowledge. In my future career I will take into consideration these elements such as content, unity, organization etc. while I am assessing my students. Finally, I really liked the workshop. It was very effective and informative. I learned a lot of new things and also I refreshed my old knowledge in some areas. So I am really greateful to both speaker and organizator. **COMMENT by Gökhan Bozkurt **
 * ABDULLAH ARAS 1734508 **

I agree with you about the subject that teachers shouldn’t assess grammar of a text which is written for literature course, because in that type of text, the most important thing is the content. I think almost everyone in universities share the same feeling about this subject. Of course teacher should indicate the grammar mistakes, but this shouldn’t affect the grade of the students. I also agreed that most Turkish students are good at writing. I think this situation is because of our educational system. For example we are also better at writing than speaking and this is one of the most important problems of our system. Finally we should know to give effective and also facilitating feedback as a teacher in the future. I think this is another important point that I agree with you. 