THREE TYPES OF COMMENTS ON CONTENT: TEACHER VS. PEER FEEDBACK

Abstract

This study was conducted to examine the effect of three types of comments, i.e. imperatives, questions, and statements, with different communicative purposes, i.e. giving information and making a request, given by an ELT teacher and peers on students’ revision of their writings. Sixty-four female students, between 16 and 26 years old studying at high-intermediate level of English language proficiency in Iran Language Institute (ILI) participated in this quasi-experimental study. They constituted four intact classes, two of which received feedback on their writing from their teacher, and the other two received peer feedback. One hundred and twenty eight pairs of students’ drafts including 672 instances of revisions of their writings based on teacher or peer comments were collected and analyzed based on the rubric designed by Ferris (1997). It was found that questions and statements provided by the teacher with the purpose of making a request, and statements given by the peers with either one of communicative functions all bring about the best results in students’ writings. On the other hand, the analysis of the revisions made by the students showed that statements provided by the teacher for the purpose of giving information has the least positive effect on the students’ modifications. Surprisingly, questions provided by the teacher and peers with the purpose of giving information were found to have negative effects on the students’ writing.