Friday, March 25, 2011

Research: Workload and Feedback for Student Writers


Question: How does workload affect the amount of attention teachers can give to student writing?

Source: Lee, M. (2009). Rhetorical roulette: Does writing-faculty overload disable effective response to
student writing? Teaching English in the Two-Year College, 37(2), 165–177.

Answer: Examines the relationship between faculty workload and the quality of written feedback to student essays. Analyzes survey results and copies of student papers with feedback from 15 English faculty representing five schools.

Finds that work-load influences the amount based on average comment length and focus of feedback with faculty with higher work-loads providing less extensive feedback that might foster writing improvement. Suggests the importance of maintaining reasonable faculty workloads in terms of providing quality writing instruction.

Comment: The key words are “…might foster writing improvement.” Many students are confused by teacher comments on their writing. I’m still looking for research on student responses to the clarity of faculty feedback on their writing. RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” Richard Beach et al. Research in the Teaching of English (November 2010), Internet. Note: The editors of RTE said that so much research was available they did not want to burden the paper edition of the journal with it, so they relegated their annotated reports on research to the Internet.

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