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Activities for classroom use
Checking written work
All levels
British and American English
It is always difficult to spot your own mistakes, and although students could often dramatically improve the accuracy of their work by using the dictionary to help them check, many of them will need guidance as to now to go about it in a methodical way.
If your students consider 'checking their work' to be a 20-second scan of a page of writing, they may not like the idea of going through it several times, targeting in turn difficult areas, such as spelling, grammar, choice of words, and so on. However, some practice should convince them that the search is much more fruitful if they concentrate on one thing at a time.
If they are preparing for an examination where they are allowed to take in monolingual dictionaries, they will soon appreciate the advantage of being able to use the dictionary efficiently for this purpose.
Below are 4 activity ideas to give students practice in checking their written work.
1. Group correction
Level: Elementary
- Collect in from the class a piece of written work, such as a letter or essay, and
as you are reading it, make a note of some of the common errors. Do not at
this stage mark the papers. You should look for errors that fall into a number
of categories, for example, spelling, mistakes in verbs and countability errors,
- Using double spacing, prepare a composite text featuring a selection of the
students' mistakes and split it up Into three sections.
- In the lesson, divide the class into small groups and make each responsible
for a particular feature.
- Give each group a different coloured pen:
Group A Verbs
(Explain that they must look at tenses, endings, whether an -ing form or an
infinitive is required, etc)
Group B Nouns
(Explain that they must check that countable and uncountable nouns are used
correctly, that the correct plural forms are used, etc)
Group C Spellings
(Explain that they can check the spelling of any word that they think is
wrong.)
- Then give each group a section of your text and tell them that they have five
minutes to look for any of 'their' kind of mistakes and check them in the
dictionary. They can correct them using the coloured pen. After five minutes
they must pass the text on to the next group.
- Meanwhile, write the original text on the board or have it ready on OHT.
When the slips have been round all the groups, the text should be correct.
- Ask a member of the group that has ended up with the first sentence to come
up and make the corrections. At this point a member of any group can
comment and the corrections should be agreed.
- Once all the text has been discussed in this way, give them back their original
pieces of work and ask them to try to correct their own mistakes.
2. Spot the mistake
Level: Intermediate
- Working as a pair, students look back through their notebooks and choose an agreed number (5-10) words that they find hard to remember.
- They then copy or adapt an example from the dictionary entry for each word.
- The pair then add an agreed number of mistakes to the sentences.
- Finally, each test is given to another pair to solve.
Here is a short example using the nouns compromise, deadlock, delegation, treaty, negotiation (the sentences contain a total of 7 mistakes):
- Both sides will have to prepared to agree compromises.
- Talks have reached the deadlock.
- The British delegation walked off the meeting as protest.
- The US refused signing the peace treaty.
- The pay rise is still in negotiation.
KEY
- Both sides will have to be prepared to make compromises.
- Talks have reached deadlock.
- The British delegation walked out of the meeting in protest.
- The US refused to sign the peace treaty.
- The pay rise is stiff under negotiation.
3. Confusing words
Level: Upper-intermediate
Certain pairs of words are commonly confused by students.
You can raise your students' awareness of areas where they might have difficulty when writing by doing an exercise like the following:
- Choose a pair of words that your students find confusing, for example borrow and lend or sensible and sensitive.
- On the board or an OHT write some example sentences with the words blanked out. A really quick and easy way to do this is to copy the examples from an advanced dictionary. The following exercises use some of the examples given in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary.
borrow / lend
1. Can 1 ______ your umbrella?
2. Can you , ______ me your car this evening?
3. Has he returned that book you ______ him?
4. I don't like to ______ from friends,
5. I've ______ the car to a friend.
6. Members can ______ up to ten books from the library at: any one time.
7. She ______ £2000 from her parents.
8. They refused to us the money.
sensible / sensitive
1. I think that's a very ______ idea,
2. It wasn't very ______ to go out on your own so late at night...
3. My teeth are very ______ to cold food.
4. She gave me some very ______ advice.
5. She's very ______ to criticism.
6. This movie may upset a ______ child,
- Students choose the correct word to complete the sentences. If they are finding it difficult to understand the difference between the words most learners' dictionaries will have notes giving extra help.
- Encourage your students to use these notes when they are doing written work to help them avoid common errors.
KEY
borrow / lend
1. borrow 2. lend 3. lent 4. borrow S. lent 6. borrow 7. borrowed 8,
lend
sensible/sensitive
1, sensible 2, sensible 3, sensitive 4. sensible 5, sensitive 6. sensitive
4. Words that go together
Level: Advanced
Worksheet (PDF, 13 KB)
Collocation is an area where students may find it difficult to see why one expression (e.g. 'cook a cup of tea') is not English, and another ('make a cup of tea') is. Only familiarity can give non-native speakers the 'feel' for the right collocate, and until they achieve this, the dictionary can be their best source of help, showing many of the most common combinations in patterns and examples.
Ask the students to look up the words and phrases on the worksheet provided and decide where to put them in the diagram. The words may fall Into one or two categories.
Related title
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, seventh edition
Source
Oxford Teacher's Club - http://www.oup.com/elt/teachersclub/adults/
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