Developments in technology mean we can now capture verbal marking of written work.

For example, learners submit their work electronically, you read through it, and you then record yourself marking it.

This verbal narration gives learners a completely different way to access your expertise and assimilate formative feedback.

A teacher receiving a learner’s essay might record themselves talking about each aspect of it in turn, drawing attention to things that are good and things that need to be improved.

Verbal marking of this type can be useful for several reasons.

First, learners can listen to your voice at the same time as they look at their work.

This dual sensory input can help them make swifter connections between your analysis and what they have done than might otherwise be the case.

Second, learners can pause, rewind and replay your feedback, accessing it in a different way to written information.

Third, recording verbal feedback fixes it in time and space – turning it into verbal marking.

This removes the ephemeral aspect of speech and means learners can return to it as they wish – something that isn’t possible with the spoken word.

One of the risks of using verbal marking is that you may find yourself being verbose.

Written comments have a discipline attached to them.

We might restrict ourselves to three strengths and a target, or we might decide that we will write only a single paragraph for each learner.

Either way, we have set a limit on the amount of information we are prepared to convey.

Verbal marking has the potential to go way past this.

You start recording yourself talking about the work a learner has produced and, before you know it, you’ve been rambling on for five minutes.

Now, that may not sound like a long time but trust me, it is.

To illustrate, go and watch a five-minute YouTube video and compare what it would feel like for a learner to have to listen to an unstructured analysis of their work lasting the same length of time.

To avoid this problem, a couple of rules are worth following.

First, set yourself a time limit and stick to it.

What this is will depend on the age group with whom you are working and, to some extent, the complexity of the work learners have produced.

However, I would always say that less is more.

You may well find that 30 – 45 seconds is plenty of time to convey useful, tailored information.

Second, structure your narration just as you would structure a piece of written feedback.

For example, stick to three strengths and a target.

Or pick three elements of the learner’s work and talk about each of these in turn, signalling that you are doing this as you go.

This should help you create condensed, rich recordings of verbal feedback through which learners can access your expertise and understand how to improve their work.

To illustrate these points, here are two examples.

Example 1: Chemistry

A chemistry teacher sets learners the task of balancing a range of equations and submitting their work electronically.

The teacher reviews this online, recording feedback for each learner.

They decide to focus on the mistakes learners have made.

For each one, they offer a quick explanation of where the learner has gone wrong and why this has happened.

They support their explanation, and develop learner understanding, by contrasting the mistakes with the equations learners have correctly balanced.

This helps learners to better understand where they have gone wrong and why they have been successful at other times.

Example 2: Philosophy

The philosophy teacher sets learners an essay, collects these electronically and then records themselves giving verbal feedback.

They decide to give three strengths and a target, using this to structure their feedback (and ensure they don’t start to ramble).

When narrating their marking of the essays they use a highlighter function in to indicate the areas of the work to which they are referring.

When learners receive their feedback, they can both hear what the teacher is saying and immediately see the area to which they are referring.

The teacher challenges learners to implement their targets in the next essay – and to record a 30-second narration explaining how successful they have been in attempting this.