Research in the Teaching of English Feb 1997

Students’ Reactions to Teacher Comments: An Exploratory Study

Richard Straub

Abstract

Current scholarship indicates that most writing students read and make use of teachers’ written comments on their drafts and find some types of comments more helpful than others. But the research is unclear about which comments students find most useful and why. This article presents the results of a survey of 142 first- year college writing students’ perceptions about teacher comments on a writing sample. A 40-item questionnaire was used to investigate students’ reactions to three variables of teacher response: focus, specificity, and mode. The survey found that these college students seemed equally interested in getting responses on global matters of content, purpose, and organization as on local matters of sentence structure, wording, and correctness, but were wary of negative comments about ideas they had already expressed in their text. It also found that these students favored detailed commentary with specific and elaborated comments, but they did not like comments that sought to control their writing or that failed to provide helpful criticism for improving the writing. They most preferred comments that provided employed open questions, or included explanations that guided revision.

Journal
Research in the Teaching of English
Published
1997-02-01
DOI
10.58680/rte19973873
CompPile
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
first-year composition teacher development revision grammar and mechanics editorial matter
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (15)

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  4. Anson et al. (2017)
    Assessing peer and instructor response to writing: A corpus analysis from an ex…
    Assessing Writing
  5. Schreibersdorf (2014)
    Literary Discipline in the Margins
    Pedagogy
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  1. DelleBovi (2012)
    Literacy instruction: From assignment to assessment
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  2. Silva (2012)
    Camtasia in the Classroom: Student Attitudes and Preferences for Video Commenta…
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  3. Cope et al. (2011)
    Technology-Mediated Writing Assessments: Principles and Processes
    Computers and Composition
  4. Taylor (2011)
    “I Really Don't Know What He Meant by That”: How Well Do Engineering Students U…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  5. Still et al. (2010)
    Listening to Students: A Usability Evaluation of Instructor Commentary
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  6. Cho et al. (2006)
    Commenting on Writing: Typology and Perceived Helpfulness of Comments from Novi…
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  7. Peterson et al. (2006)
    Sixth-Grade Teachers’ Written Comments on Student Writing: Genre and Gender Inf…
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  8. Stern et al. (2006)
    Effective faculty feedback: The road less traveled
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  9. Batt (2005)
    The Rhetoric of the End Comment
    Rhetoric Review
  10. Lunsford (2002)
    Contextualizing Toulmin's Model in the Writing Classroom: A Case Study
    Written Communication

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