Students often struggle to discover why they are not succeeding in English. This is despite receiving multiple assignments back with comments and tick boxes seemingly indicating what is wrong. It is as if there has to be a moment of recognition, a light bulb that switches on and makes it possible to move forward.
Sometimes models help; at other times pointing out the method, much like a recipe or scientific experiment, can link to the student’s innate sense of logic.
Most often though students need to actually see me marking their work. How does she assess this? Oops, that word’s wrongly spelled again. And so on.
Talking through the marking as you go through the essay (or story, or whatever) can be an eye-opener for a student. If only we had the time to do this with each of them!
Joys and woes of teaching English 
If I may comment on this (Thanking you for visiting my blog) Over 50 years ago we students had to suffer through SHAKESPEARE! We had Merchant of Venice and Julius Caesar in High School years 2 and 3 leading up to what was then the Junior. Totally boring. Then we found we had Macbeth for Fourth Year. In a mixed class, our English teacher had a totally different way of teaching. In the first lesson of the year he asked one question and set down one rule. Question, ‘Who was worse? Mr or Mrs Macbeth?’ Rule, ‘You can have any opinion you like but it MUST be backed up with quotes.’ Through silly curriculum changes we had Macbeth for our leaving year as well. Not that it mattered. The argument had continued through the Christmas break and carried on for all of year 5! We knew that play word for word by the time we finished! And he had not taught us a thing! I’m still in touch with a few classmates and we still argue over that question. AND most of us love Shakespeare!