Pixel International Conferences

This case study investigates the use of speed-marking (Blake, 2014) with Japanese students in the school of computer science at a public university in Japan. One of the most time-consuming tasks for a teacher of English is responding to writing. The novelty of speed-marking is that teachers respond immediately to the work written in class while students identify, correct and explain errors that the teacher displays to the class. All students were enrolled in a compulsory integrated skills intermediate English course comprising two 100-minute sessions per week for seven weeks. Three classes of sophomore students (n=82) with a mean TOEIC score of 381 participated in this study. According to the pre-course survey, almost all the students have no affinity for, interest in or motivation to learn English. Seven speed-marking activities on different topics were completed. Mid-course formative and end-of-course summative feedback from students regarding speed-marking was extremely positive. Students particularly appreciated receiving prompt feedback, noting that with delayed feedback they had often forgotten both the original task and the problems they had faced when writing. For the teacher, speed-marking is challenging as it is necessary to respond to each text rapidly. The benefits, however, are that class time passes quickly, students receive prompt feedback and possibly the most important benefit: there is no need to respond to writing out-of-class.

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Keywords: Response to writing;