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