Commenting on Writing

Abstract

How do comments on student writing from peers compare to those from subject-matter experts? This study examined the types of comments that reviewers produce as well as their perceived helpfulness. Comments on classmates' papers were collected from two undergraduate and one graduate-level psychology course. The undergraduate papers in one of the courses were also commented on by an independent psychology instructor experienced in providing feedback to students on similar writing tasks. The comments produced by students at both levels were shorter than the instructor's. The instructor's comments were predominantly directive and rarely summative. The undergraduate peers' comments were more mixed in type; directive and praise comments were the most frequent. Consistently, undergraduate peers found directive and praise comments helpful. The helpfulness of the directive comments was also endorsed by a writing expert. Keywords: peer feedback; peer reviews; writing in the disciplines; writing assessment; instructional technologyA s Richard Haswell (2005) noted in a recent article, peer review of undergraduate writing seems to be "the least studied of practices now very common in college writing classrooms" (p. 211). In fact, while conducting the first comprehensive review of research on any kind of college-level peer assessment, Keith Topping (1998) found only 67 empirical studies to include. Authors' Note: This work was supported by grants from the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Provost Office of the University of Pittsburgh to the second author. We thank Andrea Grana and Chioma Azi for their assistance in coding and their helpful advice on earlier versions of this article.His summary of outcomes regarding peer review of writing is cautiously positive: peer review "appears capable of yielding outcomes at least as good as teacher assessment and sometimes better" (p. 262).Even without a solid research base, however, peer review is ubiquitous in 1st-year composition. Composition instructors have come to see peer review as an essential practice, partly because it insures a round of drafting and revising and partly from an assumption that writers benefit both from commenting and from reading comments. However, given the myriad of ways in which peer review is enacted in writing classrooms, it is important to inquire further into the consequences, positive, and negative, of various aspects of the peer review process.Many important questions remain unanswered (Boud, Cohen, & Sampson, 1999;Topping, 1998). Most previous studies have focused on numeric ratings assigned by student peers to analyze their validity and reliability (e.g., Cho & Schunn, 2003;Hughes & Large, 1993; Magin & Helmore, 2000;Mowl & Pain, 1995). However valid and reliable they may be, the value of peer comments for student writers is unknown. Anecdotal evidence suggests that students actually find the task of reading and commenting on peers' papers to be more helpful for revising than attempting to address their peers' suggestions. Students have reported co...

The perceived effectiveness of written peer feedback comments within L2 English academic writing courses

“…Concerning these comments, the assessors consistently rated justified non-revision comments, mainly praise, as effective comments. This is in line with other researchers' findings into the positive impact of non-revision comments (Cho et al 2006, Lee 2008. In addition, and as pointed out by Roger M. A.…”

“…The findings suggest that students perceive non-revision comments of praise as useful, motivating and highly valuable (Cho et al 2006, Kaufman, Schunn 2011. This is supported by Thomas C. Gee's (1972) study in which he found that praise leads to authors making more revisions to their drafts.…”

“…Other studies (e.g., Cho et al 2006, Lee 2008 have employed questionnaires and interviews to examine the impact of non-revision comments on the feedback process. The findings suggest that students perceive non-revision comments of praise as useful, motivating and highly valuable (Cho et al 2006, Kaufman, Schunn 2011.…”

Improving Undergraduates’ and Postgraduates’ Academic Writing Skills with Strategy Training and Feedback

“…Each time, the text quality was rated on a 7-point scale (1 = disastrous, 7 = excellent) adapted from Cho et al (2006) as an overall quality (see Wischgoll, 2016). The measurement was conducted after the experiment was completed.…”

A Good Supervisor–Ten Facts of Caring Supervision

“…The purpose of feedback is to provide concrete advice and to enhance the smooth progress of the student's PhD research. Still, students accept feedback differently, which can, however, depend on a supervisor's skills of giving it, too (Cho, Schunn, & Charney, 2006). Caring supervision includes repetitions, feedback giving both verbally and literally, as well as making sure that the feedback was received and understood (Tracy, 1997).…”