Comprehensive Analysis of an English Language Learner’s Writing
Abstract: The abstract of 120 words or less should be a brief overview of your paper without your conclusions.
Introduction: The introduction should include introductory comments about grammar and ELLs, your student, and the context of your student’s written work. In your introductory comments, you should refer to any of the articles we have read and any other pertinent sources about grammar, correction, and ELLs’ writing development. You should discuss your student’s age, native language, country of origin, grade level, number of years/months of studying ESL, and his or her proficiency level in writing and speaking. In addition, you should discuss the context of the student’s writing sample. For example, tell what the assignment was, what it relates to (a reading, an experience, and so on), and what guidelines or other help the student was given.
Strengths and Weaknesses of ELL’s Grammar: In this section, you should describe the main strengths (good word choice, phrases, and sentences) and the main difficulties the student had on the sentence level, for example, verb tense, subject-verb agreement, articles, and so on. You must give an example of each of the strengths and weaknesses. You should give reasons for the student’s errors or patterns of errors (contrastive analysis). For example, in your student’s native language there may be no present tense of the verb “to be,” so your student may also leave it out in English.
Evaluation of ELL’s Organization and Rhetorical Structure: In this section, you should explain the student’s plan of organization and essay structure, as well as describe its success or failure. You will also discuss how the student used lexico-grammatical resources to support the type of text he/she was writing. You must provide details and examples.
Suggestions for Correction and Remediation: Having noted problems in the student’s writing in the previous sections, in this section you should explain your corrections (and even cite sources for any that you had to look up). Moreover, you should make recommendations for the student’s remediation. In other words, what should you, as the teacher, do to help the student, and what should the student do to help himself or herself?
Conclusion: You should sum up your comments and describe your response to the student’s writing. For example, was it difficult for you to correct the paper? What were your own strengths and weaknesses in the process?
