TEACHING WRITING: STUDENT RESPONSE TO TEACHERS' WRITTEN COMMENTS

Abstract

This paper disucsses the effects of teacher comments on students' revisions when students revise their compositions. The study involved three writing teachers and three students. The students differed in their language ability, ranging from advanced to low level of proficiency. Teacher comments on form enabled the advanced and intermediate students to correct their language errors successfully. However, for copmmnets on content, short teacher comments written in-between sentences were of little help to all three students. Comments in the form of long and complete sentences written in-between paragraphs were found to be useful by all three students when revising. The findings suggest that a teachers' responding style could influence a student's revision style.