RESPONDING TO STUDENT WRITING: CASE STUDIES OF SIX HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH TEACHERS.

摘要

Previous research into teacher's written comments on student writing has centered on analysis of the comments in isolation. The purpose of this study was to examine teachers' written responses within the context of the classroom was well as from the perspective of the writing teacher. It was designed to investigate (1) the methods used by six high school English teachers in responding to the writing of their students both with written comments and supplementary feedback during the course of the writing assignment, and (2) influences on these methods.;Data collection procedures included formal and informal interviews, classroom observation and audio taping for two complete writing assignments in two different classes for each teacher from the day the assignment was made through the day it was returned, and analysis of teachers' written comments on these papers with a scale designed for this purpose. The Teacher Response Scale categorized teachers' comments along two dimensions: Purpose of Response (Reader, Positive, Corrective, Negative) and Focus of Response (Ideas, Creativity/Style, Organization, Language, Mechanical/Grammatical Skills, Student Ability).;Results showed that as a group these teachers focused 47.5% of their comments on Mechanical/Grammatical Skills; 32.5% on Ideas, although the majority of the Idea comments dealt with the form of the idea (i.e., thesis statement, supporting detail) rather than the content; 13.4% on Language; 4.9% on Organization; 1.1% on Student Ability; 0.5% on Creativity/Style. Thus, teachers' comments focused predominately on form, correctness, and the writing not the writer. Purposes in response were primarily oriented toward pointing out or correcting problems in the paper or making sugggestions for improvement. The relatively low number of Positive responses (14.8%) and Reader responses (7.0%) showed that these teachers responded more often to weaknesses in the papers than strengths. These findings suggest that the teachers' global purposes in written responses were to evaluate and instruct. Response was influenced by the teacher's values, goals, and purposes for the assignment; college preparatory goals of form and correctness; an implicit value of mechanical/grammatical correctness; teachers' own experiences as writers and in teacher training; and an awareness of the individual student.