My Research Question: What features of comments asking for change, actually help the student make changes to their writing.
When you work hard on a paper and think you have put down your absolute best work, and all you get back are comments asking you to change your paper, some students may be crushed, while others are uplifted to do better and improve upon what they had written. With my question I want to take a look at what it is about those comments(asking for change) that effect if the response is a negative or positive one.
First I must categorize the comments that make a request of some sort. There are comments that ask the student to change their position of what they said. Example: "This paragraph should be said later on in your essay" those can be coded as positional change. Then there is the types of comment when the teacher requests change/asks question. Example: "Can you provide more information in this paragraph". Then there are comments that are very direct in the form of a statement while demanding change. Example "You should change your closing paragraph" these could be coded as change/statement.
I've been a student for quite some time now and have gotten hundreds of papers back and graded, most of which always have comments on them. From my own personal experience the type of comments that have a positive effect on my writing is the change/question. When a teacher asks you to change something but doesn't hint at what they want changed, it feels as if your in a pitch black room and need to find the light switch you know exactly what you must do, but do not know how to find it. That is why when a teacher makes a request to change your writing, but then asks a question, it gets you thinking and is a big hint to what they want to see on the paper.
I still have work to do in finding other examples and opinions other then my own and the couple of literacy narratives i will also use
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