When students finish writing they can hand in their work to you for marking, or work in pairs to improve each other's work, or use their ideas to build up a ‘collective best version’ on the board. Ler’s look at each option in more detail: 1 Teacher marks the students’ work. You can give explicit correction by underlining and writing in the correct form. Alternatively, you can give guided correction by underlining only, perhaps with a hint in the margin, and asking students to try to correct theit work themselves. The most challenging form of correction is to not underline any words, but co write a comment in the margin next to the appropriate line (e.g. ‘verb tense’, ‘preposition’, ‘word order’ or formality’). Students then work in pairs in the next class to help each other to respond to your comments. Don't forget to acknowledge good use of language in your feedback ~ a specific comment in the margin (Good use of this phrase), or a more general word of encouragement at the end (Very well written; A big improvement). 2 Scudents work in paits co correct and improve each other's work. Students learn a lot by correcting errors in other students’ work, and ic helps them to get into the habie of reviewing and editing. They can also learn positive things from another student’ text: fixed expressions, grammar, topic vocabulary, style, ocher ways to organise ideas ete. Peer correction also helps change the classroom. atmosphere from the quiet, heads-down writing task to something mote lively and communicative, Alter students have worked together to check and correct each other's comments, leave time for them to rewrite their emails individually before they finally hand them in to you. A similar idea is when students finish their first individual writing, ask them to leave their emails on the desk in front ‘of them, or stick them up on the board/walls. Then ask them to go round and read all the other ‘emails, looking at the scructure, organisation of ideas, and noring down any good phrases that other students used. Then they return to their seats and make any changes that they want to. 3 Collective best version on the board. This method is good in small classes where all the students hhave been doing the same task and the content of their emails is similar. Go through the email sentence by sentence. Each time begin by asking one or two students to suggest an idea, then the hole class (including you) can comment on, reformulate and improve these ideas. Build up an agreed version bit by bit on the board. Of course, the final words willbe different to what any one student originally wrote. Always consider the idea of repeating a task in a later lesson. The students will use che same instructions and can look briefly at theie previous, corrected version before they begin. Then they write the same email again. The importance of repeated practice of this kind is often underestimated by teachers who think it might be boring for students. Students tend to recognise that it helps build fluency in writing. Repeating an email from a previous lesson is also a good ‘filler’ activity for the end of a lesson. Finally, an email is something chat someone sends to someone else. So look for opportunities in class for students to ‘send’ emails to each other, and for the recipient to write a reply.