The effects of oral conferencing and written comments on the writing and revisions of ESL students

Abstract

Jonathan 0. Pease This stud y looked at the effect of written and oral comments on students ' writing. The research hypotheses were that the use of oral comments wou ld improve the overall qualit y of the students · papers, increase the length more, and cause more changes in content than the use of written comments.On the other hand, the use of written comments would cause a greater decrease in grammatical errors in the students ' papers than oral comments.The tests used to evaluate 2 these hypotheses were the holistic writing scale used bv the Test of Written English (TWE>, a word count, a content percentage scale developed by the researcher, and an adaptation of Brodkey and Young's Composition Correctness Score <1981).The procedures used in the study were as follows: Three different cl asses were used. Each class was randomly divided in half.After the students had written the first draft of an essay assignment given by their teacher, they were assigned to either the written or the oral group. Students in the written comments group received written comments only on their papers. Students in the oral conference group had conferences with their teachers about their papers. Then the students wrote a second draft of their papers. At this point, the process was repeated; students wrote a second paper.After this first draft, those students who had received written comments on the first paper had oral conferences, and those who had had or.:i.1 conferences received writ ten comments.were revised based on these comments. Again, the papersThe results of the study gave qualified support of the hypotheses. It was the opinion of the researcher that this limited support was primarily caused by the different approaches and influences of the individual teachers, rather than a pure disproval of the hypotheses. In addition, the high variance in the scores and the limited subject pool further confounded results. Ora 1 conferencing still has some demonstrated strengths which written comments lack, particularly in terms of the opportunity for feedback and the l~ngth of discourse, that merit its use in the evaluation of writing.3The results certainly showed that it did no worse than written comments. Additional research needs to be done to isolate the effective evaluation strategies that teachers are using, and to demonstrate how to apply these strategies. just a final product (see Boiarsky, 1984, andElbow, 1981). If this view is accepted, effective ~-iriting instruction should reflect this view. Teachers should not be seen as just graders evaluating final results, but should actively intervene in the process of writing itself, guiding students and helping students improve their ability to write and revise. Teachers' comments on finished copies of papers serve only to justify grades. They neither help the student to write better, nor aid the student in doing effective revisions (see Brannon and Knob 1 auch, 1982) • The purpose of teaching writing is two-fold. THE EFFECTS OF ORAL CONFERENCING AND WRITTEN COMMENTSFirst, it is to ...