The Role Of Marking, Redrafting And Editing In Improving Writing Skills Of ESL Learners

Abstract

The LSRW skills play vital role in language acquisition. The extensive knowledge of an exact meaning of English words is foundation in acquiring these skills. The first activity is marking.  Traditionally marking is considered as a responsible activity of a teacher. Teacher requires a lot of patience to go through each line of the texts. Marking is an extra load for a teacher and it requires a lot of time. If a teacher will not find time, he does it in hurry burry way which leads to dissatisfaction. The second activity is redrafting.  Here the learner evaluates, rethink and rewrite part of the texts. The third activity is editing which is in post writing stage. Here the learner involves checking for accuracy and making final revisions.

The thrust of my article is that these three activities should be closely linked. Marking is effective in improving writing skills of a learner if it provides constructive feedback which can be channeled into the process of redrafting and editing. In improving writing skills, learners need positive feedback. The most important aspect of my article is that positive approach to writing which looks for strengths as well as weaknesses. It is very easy for marking to become a mechanical task of “correcting errors” rather than a chance to indicate to students how they are developing as writers. Then the teacher awards grading texts then it motivates learners a lot in involving redrafting and editing.