Marking Madness

We've had a huge focus this term on ensuring that marking is of a good quality so that all the students are aware of what they need to do in order to improve.  Now I'm generally quite a detailed marker and I take my time to ensure that what I write is valuable to the students, but I've been having real issues with the marking for the kids who I teach who speak little or no English.  In lessons we scrape by with my poor translations and signs to tell them what we are doing and what I expect of them, but when it comes to their book work I am never sure what I can do that is going to be beneficial for them.

So this week I took a new tack and, with those students who speak no English at all, I tried my best to translate the marking into their home language.  Which was all fine with the kids from Eastern europe who speak Slavic languages and so have some very similar vocabulary to the Croats, but with the Chinese, Arabic, Greek and Russian students, who have a completely different alphabet for me to write in, I struggled.

Romanian Marking

I always feel that I don't want to let the EAL students down, as life is already difficult enough when you are stuck in a school where everyone is speaking a language that to you sounds as comprehensible as Gobbledegook!

Maybe it is going to be a case of learning to speak another 15 languages so that I can easily converse with these students in their home tongue and don't need to worry about this whole English malarky...or maybe I'm going to have to think up another way to give effective feedback to these kids!