Text Analysis of Teacher Texts Doing Text Analysis of Teacher Feedback PAGES 122-124
Jul 17, 2015
Text Analysis of Teacher Texts
Doing Text Analysis of Teacher Feedback
PAGES 122-124
The benefits of teacher feedback on student essays have been widely debated, with some questioning its value.
Frequently the criticism of teacher feedback arises from the belief that teacher comments are vague and confusing to
students.
Clearly any study of the effectiveness of teacher comments depends on the ability to categorize the type of feedback
that teachers give students and to assess the effect of such feedback on the development of students’ writing.
One study that attempts to do this is Ferris (1997). Inthis study, Ferris examined over 1,600 marginal and endcomments written by teachers on 110 drafts of studentessays written by 47 advanced L2 students.
She then analyzed the length of the written feedback,the type of comments made, the use of hedges, andwhether or not the comments were text specific. Inreference to the type of comments teachers wrote, shedeveloped the following categories.
1. Ask for information/question
Did you work out this problem with your roommates?
2. Make a request/question
Can you provide a thesis statement here—What did you learn from this?
3. Make a request/statement
This paragraph might be better earlier in the essay.
4. Make a request/imperative
Mention what Zinsser says about parental pressure.
5. Give information/question
Most states do allow a waiting period before an adoption is final—Do you feel that
all such laws are wrong?
6. Give information/statement
Lowa law favors parental rights. Michigan and California consider the best interests
of the child.
7. Make a positive comment/statement or exclamation
A nice start to your essay! You’ve done an impressive job of finding facts and quotes
to support your argument.
8.Make a grammar/mechanics comment/question/statement or imperative Past or
present tense?
a. Your verb tenses are confusing me in this paragraph.
b. Don’t forget to spell-check! (p. 321)
• Ferris then assessed the impact of these comments on student
revisions.
• She developed a subjective rating scale based on the degree to
which students utilized the comments to revise their essays by
making no attempt, a minimal attempt, or a substantive attempt
to address the comment.
• analyzed the changes students made to determine whether or not
they improved the paper, had mixed effects, or negligible or
negative effects on the essay.
• she found that the changes students made in response toteachers’ comments tended to improve the students’ papersand that marginal requests for information, requests(regardless of their grammatical form), and summarycomments on grammar led to the most substantive changes.
An Investigation into the Effectiveness of Teacher Feedback on Student Writing
Liz Hamp-Lyons and Julia Chen
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
8 categories of comment types
Comment types: Examples:
1. Praise Positive comments, non-controlling
* Well written! Much improved.* Quite nicely structured.
2. Criticism Negative comments or evaluations, authoritative
* Contradictory sentences. Confusing
* Careless with the transition ofideas!
3. Imperative Comments that tell the student writer to do or
change something, usually starting with a verb
in the imperative form
* Be specific.* Do not change the tone and
stylesuddenly. Be consistent.
4. Advice Suggestive comments often in
conditional mode
* Maybe you could add some details
here.
* Perhaps you could expand the topic
sentence.
5. Closed question Questions that either get a ‘yes’ or ‘no’
as answer, or else a simple one-word
answer
Do you think you’ve given an adequate
evaluation?
* Is this word used literally or
figuratively
6. Open question Questions that require more than a ‘yes’
or ‘no’ answer, often starting with
‘what’, ‘where’,
‘why’, ‘who’, ‘when’ and ‘how’
* Who gives / gets the lessons?
* What does this mean?
7. Mechanics Comments that deal with grammar,
punctuation, spelling, word choice etc.
appreciate
I am appreciated the help of the people
at the counter.
verb
Although parents permission him to…
8. ‘?’ - No comments except a ‘?’, usually
meaning ‘don’t understand’
??
Many argument government get attract
more people from oversea.
Students’ perceptions of teacher feedback in process writing approach
Question Answer % ofresponse
Is this the first time you wrote essays in drafts?
YesNo
29.40%70.60%
Do you find the comments given on your 1 draft helpful to you in revising yourassignment?
YesNo
88.20%11.80%
Do you find the comments given on your 2nd draft helpful to you in revising yourassignment?
YesNo
100%0%
Do you understand the comments you received?
YesNo response
94.10%5.90%
How much do you understand? 81%-100%61%-81%41%-60%No response
47.10%41.20%5.90%5.90%
Were you able to revise your draft based on the teacher’s comments alone?
YesNo
94.10%5.90%
Compared with the usual way of writing only one draft with the teacher givingcomments on everything at the same time, is this ‘new’ approach better orworse?
BetterWorse
94.10%5.90%
Do you think you can learn more or less about writing using this ‘new’approach?
Learn moreNo response
94.10%5.90%
Did you make more or less use of teacher comments using this ‘new approach’?
Used moreUsed lessNo response
88.20%5.90%5.90%
THANK YOU