English Composition Correction is the Secret to English Language Instruction: Examples from Japanese-English Composition Lessons 1-1
The following is a portion of the assignments and correction examples from the Japanese-English composition group lessons I used to conduct at the Naruse Juku.
The assignment at that time was: 'Please write a composition on a free topic regarding Japan in both Japanese and English. The length should be up to about 400 characters in Japanese.'
Students would create their Japanese-English compositions over the course of a week and submit them to me. I (Naruse) would check them, add comments, and send them back to the students before the lesson. The original drafts and the corrected drafts were shared among the entire class on the cloud. During the lesson, I would provide detailed comments on each student's assignment. I would also take questions from the students and, if necessary, we would discuss them as a group.
What is posted below is a portion of the corrections and comments for the assignment submitted by student X.
(Japanese text created by student X)
I think Jimbo-cho is one of the most unique towns in Tokyo. Since its landscape has not changed much for a long time, you can see the nostalgic Tokyo of the past.
(English text created by student X)
Jimbo-cho is one of the town I think is a unique place to see in Tokyo. With its look, not so many changes for decades, you can still find “good old days” of Tokyo there.
(Naruse's corrections to the English text created by the student)
Jimbo-cho is one of the most unique towns I think is a unique place to see in Tokyo. With its look, Since there has not been so many changes for decades, you can still find many sceneries of “good old days” of Tokyo there.
[Naruse's Comment]
The biggest problem for student X right now is that there are several fatal syntactic errors. First, it is an urgent priority to thoroughly relearn this, and unless this syntactic error problem is solved, you should not move on to the next stage of assignments. You must not get that order wrong.
To that end, it would be best to have a one-on-one lesson with me (Naruse) for about 30 minutes regarding this assignment.
There, we will thoroughly identify the causes of why the syntactic errors occurred together, and we will look specifically at how to resolve them.
It will be fine. In a 30-minute lesson, student X's problems will be solved. Let's work hard together!
(Reference English text created by Naruse)
Jimbo-cho, the world's largest used bookstore district, is one of the most unique and attractive areas in the center of Tokyo. Since the town has escaped from the storm of redevelopment for decades, you can find in the district many memorable sceneries of the good old days of Tokyo.
☆☆☆
(Naruse's Note)
One of the most important points in correction instruction is to narrow down the instructional items to the most important ones.
If you try to teach many items all at once, both the instructor and the student will become confused and fall into a state of 'chasing two hares and catching none.' The effort put in will be wasted.
Therefore, instructors are required to have the ability to accurately identify what the most important instructional items are for that student, and the 'syntactic errors' taken up here are basically always one of the most important instructional items.