Content Teachers and Writing Teachers Responding to Student Essays : A Commentary Analysis of Praise and Criticism

摘要

The fllowing study was cnducted in order to explore the difference in how writing teachers and content teachers respond to student essays. Through the analysis of six teacher commentaries on each of three essays, one major difference that emerged between the two groups of readers is in how they chose to express their feedbacck: Praise was employed more often by writing teachers, and even though much of this praise was used to mitigate criticism, their overall response to the texts was consistently more positive than it was for the content teachers. On the other hand, praise had a relatively small role in the content teachersu27 remarks, particularly since a great majority of the positive remarks were made to soften negative feedback. As a result, criticism was more prevalent and more direct. Reasons for the distribution of praise, criticism, and mitigation are discussed in terms of possible influential factors.