A great feature in MS Word is the 'insert comment' feature. It allows you to select a specific bit of text and then add an extern comment related to that text. The comments can then be read and dismissed by another reader of the same document. For ESL teachers and students, this can be a great way to add corrective, substantive, and/or organizational feedback for your ESL students directly in their own writing. In effect what you are able to do is write comments in digital writing much like you'd do on double-spaced paper writing.

Using the feature isn't really hard. Simply choose the text that you'd like to comment one using your mouse, and then under the MS Word Menus, choose the 'insert' menu item, and from within that choose "insert comment". A small window will pop up with a space for you to enter your comment. Type the information you'd like your student to know about the particular text you've selected and then hit 'enter'. The original text will now be highlighted (the default colour is yellow) to indicate that there is a comment associated with that text.

When you send the document back to your student, they will see the highlighted text and be able to click on it to read your comments. Depending on what you've requested your language students to do, they can simply learn from your comments, or make revisions for resubmission to you for further evaluation.

One thing to keep in mind when using the MS Word commenting system with ESL students (or any students for that matter), is to keep your comments focused, and to a minimum. Too many comments about too many things can be very hard for a student to take in, understand, and respond to. Choose one or two things to comment on regularly throughout the student's writing (subject verb agreement for example) and stick to that.

Now you may need to take some class time to teach your students how to use this feature in MS Word, but in the end it should be very helpful. Another option is to make a simple video that shows how it works.

If enough people express interest here, I'll make one up for you. Just leave a comment after this post saying that you're interested in learning more about it. Of course other comments are always welcome.

Cheers,

Eric

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