ERIC Number: EJ981493
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Mar
Pages: 19
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0098-6291
EISSN: N/A
Do You Care to Add Something? Articulating the Student Interlocutor's Voice in Writing Response Dialogue
Scrocco, Diana Lin Awad
Teaching English in the Two-Year College, v39 n3 p274-292 Mar 2012
In an early think-aloud protocol study that identifies which "actual" written comments help students revise, Mary Hayes and Donald Daiker examine "how students respond to educators' responses". Studying teacher feedback in a writing course focused on revision, Hayes and Daiker asked students to read aloud and analyze their instructor's written responses to their work, evaluating which comments they deemed most useful. Their findings show that positive feedback motivates students to revise, imprecise remarks perplex students, and brief comments complicate students' revision processes. Hayes and Daiker's protocol methodology gives students a more resounding voice in the scholarship than acontextual surveys and interviews, but very few researchers have responded to their 1984 call for more protocol studies. Furthermore, almost twenty years later, Fife and O'Neill maintain that "the students' voices and perceptions are still missing from these articles." In this study, the author uses think-aloud protocol methods to determine how students respond to their teacher's conversational and nonconversational written feedback on their writing. The study suggests that open-ended, cooperative suggestions on students' drafts can encourage writers to brainstorm, critically consider their ideas, and plan revisions, whereas imperative, critically directive, and closed remarks that instruct students to implement particular changes may stifle their active engagement in their writing process. (Contains 5 tables and 4 notes.)
Descriptors: Writing Instruction, Feedback (Response), Writing Processes, Protocol Analysis, Student Empowerment, Scholarship, Interviews, Surveys, Writing (Composition), Reading Aloud to Others, College Freshmen
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A