And again, it is the month of the year that I hate the most. I love my job. I love teaching but I hate marking exams, especially essays.
I guess it is easy to just cross out mistakes but if you want to do a decent job and offer feedback and provide alternatives to what they have written, then it can be a hard job and even become a daunting task , especially if you are hard pressed for time, you are not a native speaker and we are talking about C1 exams.
You might think that after 30 years doing the same, one gets used to it. Well, not me.
For those of you who are, like me, struggling with this task, the only way to make it more palatable is to take long coffee breaks and have fun while doing your job. And by fun, I mean revising, and learning by looking up “things”, and contemplating different alternatives to offer valuable feedback.
These are my fave go-to websites when correcting essays. What are yours?
- Cambridge Dictionary: to look up the different spellings of a word.
- WordHippo: in the same dictionary, you have lots of features, but I use it mainly for synonyms and antonyms. I have blogged about it here.
- WordReference: invaluable dictionary for translation.
- Ozdic: the best collocations dictionary ever.
- Sentence Dict: to see how words or expressions are used in context.
- HiNative: a free app where native speakers answer all your questions. I have blogged about it here.
- GrammarBook: lots of tips on grammar and vocabulary. Type your question in the search box.
- Linguee: It is like a bilingual dictionary but for sentences. I have blogged about it here.