For our project, “Training Teachers to Promote Writing Competence through Feedback” (We Like Feedback), we are looking for German and English subject teachers in Germany who are teaching Year 9 and are interested in a two-day training on teaching and supporting writing competence.

Writing competence is crucial for academic success across all school disciplines and is a basic requirement for societal participation. Furthermore, writing in English plays an important role in an increasing number of job sectors. However, many students have substantial room for improvement when it comes to writing, both in German and English. Writing coherent texts is challenging, especially for disadvantaged students and second language learners.

Studies have shown that feedback, when appropriately provided, is a very effective way to improve writing competence and particularly benefits underperforming students. In practice, however, many teachers secretly wonder if the effort it takes to make comments and corrections on students’ texts is a waste, especially when students seem to continue to make the same mistakes and texts show similar problems regardless of the number of times feedback has been given. So, what does this mean for teaching practice? How can one implement truly effective feedback in German and English lessons in a way that more noticeably improves and supports writing competence?

For our project, we are looking for teachers interested in broadening their own skill set when it comes to teaching writing. First, our team will collect information on the strategies participating teachers already use in teaching writing and providing feedback. Next, we will present some effective written and verbal feedback methods that may be of great help in re-structuring comments and corrections on student assignments. Our project team will then guide, advise, and support teachers in implementing the new feedback strategies in their lessons. In order to determine how feedback affects writing competence and student motivation, students will be assessed before and after the intervention. The assessment comprises writing exercises, standardized writing questions, and an affective questionnaire. A further writing exercise after student vacation is used to measure to what extent results are sustainable.

With our project, we hope to open the doors to a teacher training focused on improving students’ writing competence through formative and diversity-sensitive feedback methods. Our team looks forward to working with teachers who are determined and interested in providing a better writing education in Germany.