Reviewing in ELT publishing

Over the past few weeks, I've been reviewing materials – it's one of those jobs within ELT publishing that doesn't get talked about much, but which can be surprisingly satisfying and useful for career development … whatever stage of your career you're at.

By reviewing, I'm not talking about writing book reviews of already published materials, I'm referring to work that goes on before publication.  Draft materials are sent out to reviewers to get feedback on as part of the process of development. Exactly who, how and when will vary depending on the type of title and also depending on the publisher and publishing schedule. I can only talk about the reviewing I've experienced both as a reviewer and as a writer on the receiving end of reviewers' feedback.

What is the job of a reviewer?

The first thing to say is that reviewers are not editors. Editors work closely with writers to help develop the content, the format, the style and then along the line, to nit-pick the details and polish up the manuscript. Reviewers, on the other hand, are much more at arm's length and provide an outside perspective on the material.

Often in ELT, reviewers will be practising teachers working in the target market(s) for the book who are ideally placed to comment on how well the materials are likely to work with their students. They may pick up on issues that would never have occurred to the writers or editorial staff. Reviewers can also be specialists in a particular area brought in to assess the material from a specific angle. I've acted as a specialist reviewer looking at vocabulary using my corpus skills, at content designed to teach academic skills or at whether material hits the mark preparing students for a particular exam. From a slightly different angle, I've also written reviews of published material for publishers who are planning new editions and thinking about what to change.

The number and type of reviewers will vary as will the stage at which they review the material and how much they're asked to look at. Reviewing may be a one-off process or it may be repeated. And how much of what the reviewer says will reach the authors will vary too. As a writer, I've had instances where the full reviewer's report was sent to me directly, but more often it's been filtered through an editor.  And of course, the feedback that comes from different reviewers is often wildly contradictory, but that's a subject for another day!

What makes a good reviewer?

When a publisher asks someone to review material, they will typically provide a fairly detailed brief, often a set of specific questions that they'd like the reviewer to answer. They're not looking for a long rambling report on what you think of the material in general and what they definitely don't want is a list of typos and suggestions for better wording! A good reviewer addresses the specific issues they've been asked to look at, giving clear explanations, reasons and examples to back up the points they make – including, if possible, both positive and negative points. Of course, the writer/publisher wants to know about any potential problems with the material, but they also want feedback on what you like, what you think your students will like or what will work well in the classroom. There will often be space for extra comments outside of the target questions, but here the key is to be selective. Comment on those things that really stand out and seem significant, don't get caught up in minor details – which, after all, might change anyway in the edit.

Why review?

Reviewing may not be the glamorous end of the publishing process – if you're lucky, you'll get your name in a tiny credit on the back page – but it can be surprisingly rewarding.

For teachers hoping to get into ELT writing, it's one way to get a foot in the publishing door. It's a way to build up contacts and being seen to produce a professional, well-informed report, to brief and on time is a good starting point for putting yourself forward for other work. More importantly, though, I think it's a good way to gain insight into the publishing process. The kind of questions that the publisher asks can give you an insight into the concerns and considerations around published ELT materials that may not be the same as those for materials you create for your own classes.

For me though, the most useful part of being a reviewer, whether you’re a newbie or have been writing for 20 years, is the process of reading someone else's material and really thinking about how it works. You don't just look for what works and what doesn't on an intuitive level, but you have to think about why and how you're going to explain that. It makes you realize just how many different balls an ELT writer is trying to juggle all at the same time … how language works, how learners learn language, skills, vocab, grammar, pronunciation, what's interesting and engaging, what's motivating, what works in the classroom, in one context or across different contexts, authenticity, consistency, adaptability, level, age, education systems, learners' aims, exams and testing, diversity and inclusivity, what will be approved by ministries of education, what will sell, timing, layout, page fit, different media, permissions … And of course, it's not surprising that sometimes they're going to drop some of those balls!

Recently, I've been lucky enough to be involved in reviewing some new materials on an on-going basis, looking at each unit as it's written. The material is by some very experienced authors for whom I have a lot of respect. Lots of things are pretty much as I'd have done them myself, but I'm always coming across stuff that I wouldn't necessarily have thought of – clever little additions or approaches that work really well to address a particular issue, that I'm mentally filing away to use myself at some point in the future. And of course, there are also the things that don't quite work, or more often, that are just missing, which mean I have to stop and think about how to explain, to justify, to exemplify my feedback. Sometimes I start to add something to my report then delete it because I decide it's not important or that actually something that comes later overrides my point. Sometimes, a point that initially seems quite minor makes me realize there's actually a wider issue to be addressed.

All in all, reviewing can be a fascinating process to be involved in and for me, it's a really valuable part of my working mix.

Writing EAP for self-study: Part 2

In my last post, I talked about aims, staging and signposting; how important it is when you're putting together EAP (or other) materials for asynchronous self-study that it's crystal clear to students exactly what they're expected to do, how, why and in what order. You need to put down on the page/screen all those bits you naturally fill in as a classroom teacher. In this post, I'm going to move on past the initial setting up of tasks and touch on how we can support students as they work through activities when we're not on hand to answer questions, give hints and generally point them in the right direction. I'll also dip into the thorny issue of answer keys and feedback.

3 SCAFFOLDING

How do we support students through tasks when we're in the classroom? As well as trying to give clear instructions, we wander round the class, we observe, we listen in and sometimes ask the odd question. The conversation might go something like:

Ensuring that students are on track both with the task itself and with the key ideas in the content right from the beginning are essential to the success of the overall task or series of tasks. If students get the wrong end of the stick early on, they'll get completely lost and you're setting them up to fail. When you're not on hand looking over their shoulder, you need to find ways to build that support into the material.

One way of doing that is by trying to pre-empt problems and misinterpretations. Build in extra (quick) questions that make sure students haven't misunderstood a key point and give them immediate feedback. If they have gone wrong, they need a question + feedback that will explain their misconception before they go on. More about answers and feedback below.

Start off with more guided questions and tasks, especially with a new group or new task type.  Posing an open question to a student who hasn't got used to dealing with academic language/content in English or isn't used to your approach to language teaching could leave them completely stumped. Multiple choice options, on the other hand, give them a starting point and an idea about the kind of response you're looking for. Then, when they come to a similar question in the next task, you can open things up a bit – maybe give them options again, but ones that paraphrase the text less closely or give them part of an answer to complete.

Examples are a simple way to show students what type of response you’re expecting. Tables, charts, diagrams or mind maps with some info already included and gaps/sections for the student to fill in can be more helpful than a blank page in getting them started or organizing their ideas.

Make sure students know where to look for help if they get stuck. Dictionaries are an obvious source of language support, but don't assume students will have great dictionary skills already. The bilingual dictionaries they're probably already using might help with very specific terms that will likely have a direct equivalent translation (thermodynamics, hyperinflation, chemotherapy), but they don't always hit the mark when it comes to words that can have more than one meaning (contract, nature, uniform), metaphorical uses (a major obstacle, a solid foundation) or groups of words that have to be interpreted as a phrase (come to the fore, at the expense of).  And just giving students a list of links to learner's dictionaries at the start of a course won’t mean they'll necessarily know how to use them or remember where the link was when they're stuck in the middle of a reading text.  Put the dictionary link right there on the page with the text itself or if you think a particular word or phrase is likely to cause issues, you could even embed a link to a dictionary entry within the text. (The links above take you to different online dictionaries, just so as not to show any favouritism!)

Other types of in-built support will depend on your course/content, but glossaries of terms can be helpful (and can even be developed collaboratively by a group to give students more buy-in), grammar reference material, checklists, referencing guidelines, marking criteria, etc. Importantly though, don’t just deposit them on an LMS and expect students to find them, provide regular links or reminders at appropriate points.

4 ANSWER KEYS AND FEEDBACK

Working on self-study material for publication, there’s always pressure to provide answer keys for everything and for activities to have simple, unambiguous answers. With good reason. You can’t be sure whether students will be using a self-study book alongside a face-to-face course and have a teacher to check answers with or whether they'll be working completely alone and have no way of knowing whether their response is close enough to the suggested answer or actually a glaring error. That’s fine when you’re dealing with basic A2 vocab practice – the answer is clearly banana, not apple or cherry – but it becomes more of a challenge at higher levels and especially once you get into the complexities of EAP.

When you’re designing materials for your own course though, you have more choice about how you deal with answer keys and feedback. For each section of material and even for each individual task, you need to decide whether it’s going to be most useful for students to check their answers as they go along, to check them at the end of a section, to hand in responses (in some form) for feedback or to hold over a discussion for a synchronous ‘class’. Those decisions will depend in part on the flow of the material. As I mentioned above, if it’s important that students have understood a key idea before they move onto the next part of the task, then any comprehension check questions will need to be followed immediately with answers and quite possibly a bit of explanation. For language practice activities, on the other hand, it might be better to let students work through a task or sequence of tasks, then go back and check their answers at the end.

The next choice to make is whether or not to design tasks that have unambiguous correct and incorrect answers, whether to have suggested answers to compare against or whether to leave options completely open. In part, that will depend on the nature of the task, but it will also depend on how much feedback you have time to provide either within pre-prepared feedback commentary, one-to-one or during ‘class time’.  I think if you’re providing suggested or sample answers for all but the most basic tasks, then students need to know that they can (and should!) ask about them if they’re not sure. You don’t want the confident student assuming that what they’ve put is ‘close enough’ when it’s actually well wide of the mark, nor an unconfident student feeling like they’re constantly failing when in fact their responses are perfectly acceptable, just not word-for-word identical to the key.

The benefit of a digital medium is that you don’t have to cram your answer key into a few short pages at the back of the book. You have space for a bit of explanation or commentary, for example, to show what would be the best answer, what would be okay, but not quite as concise/accurate/appropriately academic, and what would be clearly incorrect and why.

If you want more open responses, either written or oral, then do you want students to submit them for individual feedback – do you have time for the marking? If so, the students need to know what format to submit their responses in, when and how. Set that out clearly alongside the task, don’t expect them to remember. Or do you want to follow up with some kind of discussion in class time? Then students need to know there’s going to be a follow-up which they should perhaps make notes for and have to hand for the next synchronous session.

Of course, all of these things will depend to a degree on your students, your course and the platforms you’re using. As an overriding principle though, when you’re creating content for self-study, imagine how you’d teach it face-to-face and consider what extra information, support, guidance and feedback you’d normally give, then think about how you can put that on the page in a clear, concise way that feels supportive rather than overwhelming. I think this tweet sums it up quite nicely:

If you’re looking for more ideas for creating your own EAP materials, then How to Write EAP Materials is available as both an ebook and in print (via Amazon).

Playing with Google Docs for student writing

I don’t get into the classroom as much as I’d like to nowadays, so whenever I get a chance to do some teaching or teacher training, I like to try out new ideas. Last year, I used a week of teacher training workshops in Oxford (as part of the ELT Summer Seminar) to try out using screencast software to give feedback on writing; see my post about it here. This year, I used two lovely groups of teachers on the same course as guinea pigs for using Google Docs for student writing.

I’ve used Google Docs myself as part of writing projects and I’ve heard various people talk about how it can be used with students, especially for collaborative writing. There’s a very good blog post about using Google Docs with EAP students by David Reid, for example.

Context and task: As the workshops I was leading were on the theme of teaching writing skills, giving the participants a writing task to complete themselves, and for me to give feedback on, was an ideal way to demonstrate some of the practical issues I wanted to discuss. Having learnt from my experience last year of trying to give screencast feedback to 27 individual trainees within the space of a couple of days (!!), this year I chose a group writing task. On the first day, we did an activity which involved a group discussion and as a follow-up I asked each group (of 4 to 5 people) to write a very brief summary (max 60 words) of the most interesting point to come out of the discussion. The summary was to be written using Google Docs.

Set-up: I did a quick demo in class just to show what Google Docs looks like and how it works. I had four groups altogether, across two classes, so I set up four documents and gave each one a heading plus a simple rubric. This meant that when the participants reached the document, they knew they were in the right place. 

I then collected their emails and set about sharing the document for each group with its members. As a newbie to setting up Google Docs, I wasn’t sure how simple this process was going to be, but actually it turned out fine. For those with Gmail accounts, it was super simple; I just added their email addresses to the document using the ‘share’ button and hey presto, everything connected up beautifully. For those without Gmail accounts, the process wasn’t quite as smooth, but still wasn’t problematic. In these cases, I sent them a link to the document which they could click on to access it. Apparently, they didn’t get an icon with their name and profile picture, but they still had no problem editing and commenting along with everyone else.

Giving feedback: One of the benefits of Google Docs, beyond students being able to work collaboratively, is that as the teacher you can go in and offer feedback at any point. For this task, I checked in to see how things were going before the deadline I’d set for completing the task. The first thing I noticed was that all the groups had got carried away and written way too much, so I was able to leave a comment just reminding them of the word limit and nudging them back on track. This seemed like a really nice way of working together with students to help them achieve the best result, rather than just waiting for them to get it wrong then failing them.

Once the deadline had passed, I went in again and gave more detailed feedback. On this occasion, I didn’t ask the participants to act on my feedback, but with a “real” group of students, it could have been the start of a series of interactive revisions. Again, it’s an opportunity for the teacher to act more like an editor that an examiner, helping students towards the best possible final piece of work. (See more of my thoughts on this relationship here.)

Shifting comments

Drawbacks: My initial concerns about whether everybody would get on okay with the technology and be able to access the documents turned out to be unfounded. One feature that we found a little bit frustrating though was the fact that the comments, which appear in the margin, don’t seem to link up quite so clearly and obviously with the sections of text they refer to, like they would in, say, a Word document. The comments seem to jump about, sometimes switching order when you click on them and just generally being a little bit confusing.

Participant reaction: The reaction to the technology was generally pretty positive and I think it opened up lots of potential ideas for teaching. What was more interesting, perhaps, was the teachers’ reactions to doing a group writing task. To be asked to work together with a group of people you’ve only just met is no easy task! All the groups reported feeling a bit unsure about how to organize themselves, how to get started and what the etiquette was for commenting on or editing others’ writing. I think it was a useful exercise for the teachers in putting themselves in their students’ shoes.  Some of the points that came up in the post-task discussion:

- Would it be easier for students who know each other better (so later in a course)?
- In terms of group dynamics, is it better to let students choose their groups or for the teacher to ‘engineer’ the groups?
- Would the interaction/dynamics vary depending on the cultural background of the students?
- Would it be better to give students more guidelines for carrying out the task; allocating roles and procedures maybe?
- Or alternatively, would setting too many ‘rules’ stifle students’ own critical thinking and creativity? Is working out how to work together part of the learning process?

Overall, the whole thing was a really interesting exercise and I think Google Docs will now definitely be added to my teaching toolbox.