ARTICLE+REFLECTION-HASAN+ACAR-

The article that I am going to write about was written by Icy Lee. The title is “What About a Feedback Revolution in the Writing Classroom?”. In this article Lee argues why old-fashioned feedbacks are not successful enough in writing classes, why a feedback revolution is necessary and how this revolution can be done. In the first part of the article, she puts forward that detailed written error feedback in writing classes is time consuming for teachers and discouraging for students. Because of that reason, she suggests a revolution in writing classes. This revolution includes some points which are listed in the second part of the article. The mot important point is that in this revolution, “feedback is not primarily a tool for judging writing quality and assigning scores/grades but more importantly a pedagogical tool to improve learning and teaching.” In the third part of the article, Lee explains how to do this revolution and what we should change in order to apply this revolution. There are three main topics in this section. First one is “a bottom-up approach to change” which suggests that teacher should get together to talk about current feedback and what kind of change is necessary. Second one is “enlist support of key stakeholders”. In this topic she says that it is also important to inform school principals and parents about the new feedback approach. The last topic is “classroom level of change” which is about what teachers should do while using this new form of feedback. There are some advice for teachers such as how teachers should give feedback, what they should do after giving feedback and what students are expected to do when they get feedback. In that part it is important to help the students to understand that not grades but learning is more important in learning process. I liked the way how she organized and wrote her ideas about a revolution in writing classroom. Her language is easy to understand and the article not so long but it is clear. Also her perspective is good and clear. She looks at this revolution at the teachers’ and the students’ point of view. Lee’s ideas in that article are also applicable for Turkish foreign language classes. In Turkey, written detailed error correction is used very commonly and it is difficult for teachers. Moreover, learners either do not give importance to what teachers have written on their paper but give importance to their grade, or they give much importance to these red corrections and they lose their courage. In order to prevent from these undesirable situations, it is important to make some changes in feedback in writing classes. She suggests the teachers to give a good writing topic to the students because poor writing topics lead the students to the failure. It is an important point to mention because choosin a good topic is an important problem for Turkish foreign language learners. Also teachers should give clear instructions and clear evaluation criteria so students can be fully aware of what and how they are expected to write. In Turkey, most of the teachers give only the topic and then they expect high quality writing. It is really hard for students to write without knowing what and how they should write. It is also a good idea to prepare a rubric and distribute a copy of it to the students which enable them to make a self correction. Lee says during error correction, instead of correcting every little error, they should focus on a certain structure and what the message tried to given by the student is. It is important to avoid from error hunting method because it can disencourage some students. In Turkey, teachers usually use a red pen to mark the errors and also sometimes they write long explanatory sentences. It is not very nice for students so much red writings on their own writings. After giving feedback, Lee proposes teachers to ask the students write some comments on their writings and set new goals for the next one. Also teachers should explain some common mistakes and if it is necessary they should explain the structure or the grammar topic again. In Turkey, it is critical to give a chance to students focus on their writing results instead of their scores. Usually teachers just ask the students to check their paper and only some of the students are really interested in their mistakes. In order to get everyone’s attention, a reflection on their own writing can be asked by the teachers. Until now, the Lee’s ideas about a revolution can be applied and suitable for Turkish students. However, she also says that the revolution in feedback can also be explained to the parents and some ways should be found to de-emphasise scores in schools. Unfortunately these two suggestions are not very applicable in Turkish EFL classes since firstly, parents are not usually very interested in which method is used during classes but they are usually interested in which score their children get. Therefore, it is not useful to talk about this revolution with parents. Secondly, according to current Turkish education system, it is not possible to find a way to de-emphasise scores in schools because scores are the main stones in Turkish educational system. Apart from these two advices, other ideas and suggestions are appropriate for Turkish EFL classes. I agree with Lee’s point of view about the revolution in writing classes. It is really necessary to change something about feedback to encourage students and take their attention to what they have written rather than what their score is. I also agree with the points that she refers to how to apply this new method. They are useful and informative points. The only thing that I disagree with her is the parents informing part as I mentioned above. I don’t think that it is really necessary to inform parents about the new feedback method. To sum up, it is a good article about a new approach to give feedback in writing classes. I liked her ideas and I found them very useful.