Responding to students' writing

Well well well. What do we have here? A bad handwriting? A good quality of paper? :D

This is actually one of the student's essay that we're supposed to mark. We discussed about it, and after that, my team; Ethan, Declan, Syazwan and me, agreed to give this student 13 out of 20 marks. Despite the grammatical errors that this student made, we can still understand the storyline well. What I personally like about this essay is, the student described the situation quite clear. Most of the errors that this student made is the grammar. What I would like to do if I only have less than 20 students in my class is, I would talk to them personally. I believe by doing this way, the students will know more about their errors and they can ask questions about it. If I write comments on their paper, they will feel stress to see lots of red marks and they can't make corrections to their essay on the same paper. Of course I will use red pen to mark their paper, but I will not create a 'red batik' on it. I will use symbols to indicate their errors.

They have to write everything all over again even when there are only few mistakes on the essay. On the other hand, if I have more than 20 students in my class, the best way to tell them about the errors is to use check list. The students can still use the check list for their next essay. I will encourage them to do peer-editing first before the next submission because they will feel more comfortable discussing with their friends. My follow-up activity to deal with the most common errors found in the essay is to ask them to create simple sentences about their scary experience using the W/H questions as the common errors are their grammar.