Teachers
How do I correct a student’s copy, then ask them to revise it?
Written by the TestFLE team.
In short
From a prompt in “Writing tasks” or from the student’s sheet, “Correct” opens the copy: you annotate, choose an assessment and publish. Correction is manual, with no AI; “Publish and ask for a revision” sends the copy back to the student, three versions at most.
Who this is for, and what you need first
- Who this is for
- Teachers who have assigned a writing prompt, and school administrators.
- What you need first
- The Practice option, chosen by your school.
- A copy submitted by a student for a prompt you have assigned. A school administrator also corrects their colleagues’ copies.
The steps
- In the sidebar, click “Practice”, then “Writing tasks”.
- Click the prompt. On the assignment’s card, click “Recipients”.
- On the student’s row, click “Correct”. The correction workspace opens in full screen.
- Read the “Student’s text”. If the student has attached photos or a PDF, they appear under “Handwritten work”.
- To comment on a passage of the text, select it, then click “Annotate the selection”. Write the remark in the “Remarks” list.
- To comment on a photo or a PDF page, click “Enlarge the page”, then click the spot you want to comment on. A numbered marker is placed there, and its remark is written in the same list.
- Under “Assessment”, choose “Very good”, “Good”, “OK” or “Could do better”.
- In “General comment”, write what you want to tell the student about their copy as a whole.
- Click “Publish”.
Steps 5, 6 and 8 are optional. You can also open the copy from the student’s sheet: “Answers and written work” tab, “Writing tasks” sub-tab, “Correct the copy” button. A student who has not submitted their copy stays “Not submitted” and has no button: you never read a draft.
What you need in order to publish
- An assessment. It replaces the mark: there is no mark out of 20. As long as none is chosen, the screen says “Choose an assessment to be able to publish.”
- Remarks that are all written. Each remark has 500 characters at most, and a copy carries 200 at most, text passages and markers combined. An empty remark prevents publishing (“Every remark must be written before publishing.”). A remark’s “Remove” button also deletes its passage or its marker.
- A comment, if you wish. The “General comment” has 5,000 characters at most.
The draft saves itself, about one second after your last change, and when the workspace closes; the screen shows “Draft saved”. The student sees nothing until the correction is published.
Publishing several corrections at once
In a prompt’s “Recipients” list, the “Publish the ready correction (1)” button appears as soon as at least one correction is ready. With several, it becomes “Publish the ready corrections (3)”, for example. A correction is ready when it is a draft with an assessment and remarks that are all written, on a submitted copy. One click publishes them all, and the screen confirms: “3 corrections published.” Incomplete corrections are not touched.
Asking the student to revise their copy
- In the workspace, choose the assessment and write the remarks, as you would to publish.
- Click “Publish and ask for a revision”.
This button publishes the correction, then sends the copy back to the student, in a single action. If the correction is already published, the button is called “To revise”: a window asks “Ask the student to revise the copy?”, and a click on “To revise” confirms it.
The student finds their text and their files again, can change them even after the closing date, then submits a new version that you correct in turn. The request cannot be cancelled: the screen offers no button to withdraw it. A copy has three versions at most, so two revision requests; at the third version, the screen shows “Three versions at most: no further revision is possible.” and the two revision buttons disappear.
Going further
Understanding correction and revision
What the student sees, and when
Before publication, the student sees nothing, not even that a correction exists. Afterwards, the prompt’s card carries “Corrected” followed by the assessment, and “Read again” opens the correction. The platform sends the student no message: they discover the correction when they reopen “Writing tasks”. Reading the correction and revising your copy describes what they see next, including the reopened copy.
Editing a correction that is already published
A published correction can still be changed, but it can never be withdrawn: no button takes it back to the draft state. The “Publish” button becomes “Publish the changes”. Automatic saving changes the very correction the student is reading: your edits appear to them without waiting for this button, and the student then sees the update date. In the list of recipients, the corrected copy carries “Read” instead of “Correct”, but the button opens the same workspace, where you can still make edits.
Reading the list of recipients
Each row gives the state of the copy and the state of the correction:
- “Not submitted”: the student has submitted nothing; there is no copy to read.
- “Submitted”, followed by “(v2)” from the second version onwards, with the submission date, then “Not corrected”, “Correction in draft” or “Correction published: Good”, for example.
- “To revise, version 2 in progress”: you have sent the copy back, and the student is revising it.
- “(left the target)”: the student has left the targeted class or has been archived, but their submitted copy is still there.
The versions of a copy
As soon as a copy has several versions, the workspace shows one tab per version, for example “Version 2 (current)” and “Version 1”. A past version is read-only: the screen states “Past version: its correction is frozen.” While the student is revising their copy, the workspace says “The student is revising the copy: the new version has not been submitted yet.”
When the student submits the new version, you receive a notification, where the note “new version” tells you it is a revision. The copy starts again with no correction, and you correct it like the first one. The files of the previous version are kept with it; the student starts again from the same files. The prompt and the assignment stay locked throughout the revision.
Who can correct, and who can read
The author of the assignment corrects the copy, and so does the school administrator. A colleague who sees the student on their sheet can read their copy: in the “Answers and written work” tab, the button is called “Read the copy”. The workspace then opens in read-only mode (“Read only: you are not correcting this copy. Only a published correction is shown.”). They never see a draft correction and cannot change anything.
If the workspace refuses
- Publishing without an assessment is refused (“Choose an assessment before publishing.”).
- An empty remark, or one with no passage, is refused (“Every annotated passage needs its remark, and every remark its passage.”).
- Two annotations cannot overlap (“Two annotations overlap: choose another passage.”). The “Annotate the selection” button is greyed out and the screen says “The selection already covers an annotation: choose another passage.”
- A remark or a comment that is too long is refused (“A remark exceeds 500 characters.” or “The comment exceeds 5000 characters.”).
- If the text of the copy has changed in the meantime, saving is refused (“The annotated text no longer matches the student’s submitted text: reload the copy.”).
- A revision can only be requested for a submitted copy whose correction is published (“This copy cannot be returned to the student: it must be submitted and its correction published.”).
- Beyond the third version, the revision is refused (“This copy already has 3 versions: no further revision is possible.”).
- “Publish the ready correction” with no correction ready is refused (“No correction ready to publish.”).
Related articles
- How do I create a writing prompt and assign it?In “Practice”, then “Writing tasks”, you create a prompt, then you assign it to one student, several students or a class. You then read and correct each copy yourself: the platform does no automatic analysis of it.
- How do I read the teacher’s correction and revise my copy?When the teacher has corrected a writing task, the card shows “Corrected” and the assessment; “Read again” opens the correction. If the teacher reopens the copy, the “To revise” label appears: the student makes their corrections, then clicks “Submit the new version”.
- What will I find in a student’s sheet?A student’s sheet brings together their identity, their test access and their results in four tabs, two of which depend on the Practice option. Click the student’s row in “My students”, or choose “Open the student’s sheet” in their menu.
- How do I write and submit a writing task?The student writes their task in the “Writing tasks” section of “Practice”: the text saves on its own, then “Submit” sends it to the teacher. The teacher reads and corrects by hand, with no automatic analysis.