Rhetoric of Teacher Comments on Student Writing

The role of rhetoric in establishing an educational mood or environment has become a topic of interest for many contemporary educators. In teacher education, there is a focus on how a teacher’s attitudes, behaviors, and persona can affect—positively or negatively—the ambiance of the classroom. Julie Peterson Nelson et al. of Brigham Young University have analyzed the effect of implementing praise notes in a middle school as a means of preempting negative behaviors and encouraging positive ones. These praise notes (given to students and recorded administratively in the school district) have been associated with decreased disruptive behaviors, increased on-task behavior, increased classroom motivation, academic success, augmented student self-esteem, and closer teacher-student relationships (119–20). The importance of this behavioral research validates an extension of the same concept into the realm of teacher-student communication in higher education. Since aspects under discussion can influence the learning environment—and consequently, the students—experts in composition have begun to research how written communication between teachers and students affects the learning experience by altering rapport, environment, expectations and, ultimately, student performance. Especially in larger classes, teachers’ comments on student work constitute a large percentage of the one-on-one attention a student receives. Teachers dedicate many of their working hours to grading and commenting on student work. Extensive research is necessary to validate the time teachers invest in responding to student work and to confirm that students are not largely disregarding teacher input (Wiltse 126). The foundational research of Nancy Sommers concludes that “what is said in [written] comments and what is done in the classroom mutually reinforce and enrich each other” (155). Written communication between teachers and students is inevitably linked to student performance and classroom behaviors. The present study replicates Dana Ferris’s study of classroom rhetoric via one method of professional communication between teacher and students: teacher commentary on student papers. Ferris has analyzed student revision using the measures of the length, types, use of hedges, and text-specificity of teacher comments on rough drafts. The rhetoric that an instructor applies in comments is hypothesized to correlate to the students’ decisions to revise thoroughly and their ability to do so. The present study includes primary research conducted with a section of Analytical Reading and Writing (WRT 102), a required first-year writing course at a small (5,000 students), private college in south central Pennsylvania. Teacher comments on ten mid-draft student papers are categorized according to length, type, use of hedges, and text-specificity. Subsequent student revision is analyzed given the classification of the comments. The results of this study are compared to those Ferris found in her 1997 study at California State University. This research draws conclusions about the best method for teachers to employ in their comments on student writing to maximize the potential for revision.