First Advisor

Marjorie S. Terdal

Date of Publication

1988

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.) in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

Department

English

Subjects

English language -- Writing -- Study and teaching -- Foreign speakers, English language -- Rhetoric -- Study and teaching -- Foreign speakers

DOI

10.15760/etd.5688

Physical Description

1 online resource (128 p.)

Abstract

This study looked at the effect of written and oral comments on students' writing. The research hypotheses were that the use of oral comments would improve the overall quality 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 these hypotheses were the holistic writing scale used by 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 classes 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 oral conferences received written comments were revised based on these comments.

Comments

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Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/21272

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