184872286 newman-s-master-s-thesis-on-audio-and-typed-feedback

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The Impact of Typed and Spoken Feedback on Efficient Grading and Effective Revision

Brian J. Newman

Submitted for Completion of the Master of Arts in English Studies

Dr. Dianne Chambers and Dr. Mary Kay Mulvaney

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June 23, 2007

Abstract

Despite numerous studies detailing the causes of English teacher burnout, more specifically those teaching composition, teachers still look for more ways to be efficient and helpful in directing students through feedback. Microsoft Word includes options for inserting typed comments and voice comments by one assessing a piece of writing. Using both of these concepts on timed essays for an AP English 4 class, I measured the use of typed and voice comments in two ways: to see if either way helps me to comment on a class set of essays more quickly, and to see which produces better results for student writing. My initial expectations were that typed comments would be more helpful because the students could see my suggestions; however, the voice comments led to more successful revisions. In addition, I saved an average of two minutes per essay by inserting voice comments to assess the essays.

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The Impact of Typed and Spoken Feedback on Efficient Grading and Effective Revision

Introduction

English teachers have long struggled with grading student essays. How much do

we write? What do we write? Do we have time to let them revise? Do I focus more on

content or grammar? Do I circle their mistakes or let them find them? Do I write longer

terminal comments or more frequently throughout the paper? Answers to these questions

remain fluid, changing based on student population, the purpose for the assignment,

course load for the teacher, and any number of factors that contribute to an English

teacher’s ability to positively influence student writing.

The idea of initiating some kind of conversation seems to be a thread found in a

number of studies. This conversation may literally take place, if a teacher has the luxury

of time for writing conferences, or it may be a series of piecemeal conversations through

a teacher’s comments on a paper and a student’s response on a subsequent draft. More

specifically, teachers can ask questions of students in the paper and students can respond

through revision. How one asks these questions and makes these comments has evolved

over the years. In the early-to-mid-1970s, teachers experimented with tape-recorded

comments. While this form exhibited benefits for students and teachers, it failed to take

in large numbers probably due to the unwieldiness of collecting this many cassettes, or

perhaps due to the location problem of trying to find a place to record.

What has come out of the idea of the spoken word for revision has been the

importance of tone. How a teacher suggests revision has become as important as what

the teacher actually suggests, and many educators fail to consider how a student may see

comments like “awk.” and “clarity” on an essay. Do teachers write these comments

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because they should be clear and helpful to the student, or could the teachers just be tired

of writing so much with so little return? By making longer comments hedged with

suggestions such as “maybe you could…” or “have you considered…” as the lead-ins,

students have proved to be more responsive to teachers’ comments.

Writing these full-sentence comments may be too tedious, however, and teachers

need to streamline the already exhaustive process of grading essays. Utilizing the

existing technology can help with this problem. Microsoft Word comes with functions

for recording voice comments and inserting typed comments. With computers in most

households for students, and in most classrooms for teachers, this medium becomes a

more appealing option. If many teachers type faster than they write, perhaps inserting

typed comments in sentence format would not be that grueling. For teachers who prefer

to convey their messages through speaking, perhaps this option appeals to them, allowing

teachers to offer complete thoughts by speaking them rather than trying to write them.

In considering the options, I intended to try both typed and voice comments and

see which I prefer and which my students prefer. I was conscious of time, and considered

my tone in each comment, all of which appear as complete sentences. My hypothesis

was that the typed comments would be more appealing to me and to the students. I

predicted I would like these better because editing a thought goes much more quickly

when typing. I believed students would like typed comments better because visually,

they will actually see the suggestions next to the highlighted area as opposed to just an

audio icon waiting to be clicked to reveal the suggestion.

I figured that if I did end up liking the audio comments more it would be because

I could do it hands free and it would prove to be more time effective. If the students liked

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it better I imagined it would be because they would react to my spoken tone better as if

we were having a conversation about their writing; the voice comments seem very

personal.

Overall then, my contention was this: In order to make better use of their time and

to return student work more quickly, teachers should use the Insert Comment function

when the school’s technology allows for such submissions. Students respond better to

thorough, polite comments that still show their ownership of the paper. When

considering the two types of comments I could insert into students’ papers using

Microsoft Word, I initially believed typed comments would be more beneficial because

students could see the suggestions rather than just hear them.

Literature Review

“These kids just don’t know how to write!” This complaint might be heard from

a group of English teachers at the middle or high school level, or even perhaps at the

college level. In fact, it might be a teacher in any discipline. But whose responsibility is

it to make these writers better? This task usually falls to the English teachers. In one

study, Robert Connors and Andrea Lunsford surveyed teacher comments on 3,000 graded

college essays. After reading the feedback, they noticed the frustration level of teachers

in the comments, surmising these negative feelings as a response to teachers “with too

many students, too many papers to grade” and little time to devote to building

individuals’ writing ability (214). In fact, only 5% of the papers involved in this study

included “engaged comments of more than 100 words” (214). Why did 95% of teachers

write less? Do they find it useless? Do students even read everything when teachers take

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the time to write more? Is the actual act of writing so tedious and time consuming that

teachers demand less writing assignments from students not because the students are

sophisticated writers, but because time just does not allow for more assignments?

Whether we write terse, imperative comments like, “Use better diction!” or

elaborate with longer comments about our hurt feelings that the students did not heed our

in-class directions, teachers struggle with knowing what to write in order to make

students better writers. In his article, “Theory of Responding to Student Writing,” C.W.

Griffin captures the myriad frustrations in how we as English teachers help students when

he asks, “What kinds of comments are most effective? Should they be primarily

descriptive or evaluative? And where do our responses focus? Do we tend to focus on

intrinsic or extrinsic features? Also, what kinds of assumptions are we making when we

focus on one set of features as opposed to another?” (299). Perhaps our focus should

concentrate not only on our purpose for the writing, but our purpose as teachers of

writing: Is increasing clarity more important than eliminating frequent comma splices?

Does a weak thesis deserve more guidance than frequent errors in subject/verb

agreement? As English teachers, we must not only examine what we say, but also how

and why we are saying it.

The tone implicit in a teacher’s response on an essay can often have more of an

impact that the actual words themselves. Richard Straub found that students “did not

respond well to comments that they felt were expressed in a highly judgmental way” (qtd.

in Bardeen, Bardeen and Deegan 95). Interestingly as well, Straub found that students

“preferred praise on their writing only when the praise had an explanation as to why it

was praiseworthy” (95). The danger some teachers recognize (and others unfortunately

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ignore) is that any response a teacher “might intend as constructive criticism can be

interpreted by that student as personal criticism rather than comment on the work

presented” (Crone-Blevins 95). To address this, Margie Krest explains how she works

both positive comments and negative into one feedback point: “Your sentence structure

and mechanics are great, but I feel lost because I’m not sure of your point” (40). What

Krest does here is follow the advice of David Morand, who discusses “surrounding the

criticism/suggestion with positive comments to soften its impact” (Morand qtd. in Krest

386). Morand’s original study discusses “status leveling, the reduction of power

differentials among superior and subordinate actors”; but his study is in relation to bosses

and employees (Morand 245). Morand calls the phrase “tactics of negative politeness”

(238). This may work for a teacher, but the time involved would be a bit more

considerable because s/he would need to preface each suggestion with some polite idea to

notice. Lois Rubin found that using these techniques as a more personal response than

simple symbols or underlines “shows readers’ enjoyment of the text or emotional reaction

to it” and enables the reader to create more of a bond with the writer (388). So tone then

is important, but must the reader always hedge each criticism with politeness to get a

point across? Would this be more time consuming and seemingly false for students if we

did this all the time?

Teachers have been searching for ways to improve their own efficiency in grading

for as long as writing has been a part the school curriculum. Some teachers have

experimented with minimalist grading techniques. For instance, “An exclamation point

shows approval, a question mark points to a passage that is unclear, and a ‘No!’ tells a

student a problem should be eliminated” (Anderson and Speck 24). Yet, a problem that

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develops here in sacrificing thoroughness for expediency is that students may only see

their surface errors; that is if they understand the coded marking system at all. If teachers

feel put off by minimalist grading and instead feel compelled to give students their full

attention by correcting every error in every essay, will the student even read the teachers’

comments? Virginia LaFontana asks, “Weren’t they grateful for my tracking down every

error in an effort to purge their problems of grammar, spelling and punctuation before I

sent them off to college? […]Definitely not” (71). Some English teachers view

themselves as the last defense, that last great bastion of hope for students to right all their

writing wrongs before entering their freshman composition classes in college. These

teachers need to understand that they cannot fix everything. Those teachers who

subscribe to the quality of comments vs. the quantity have investigated ways to make this

easier and may have found it in talking.

One way to ease the writing burden is to put down the red pen altogether. As

early as 1973, teachers began using tape-recorded comments. Enno Klammer writes,

“The instructor can say much more and say it more clearly” than s/he could using hand-

written comments on paper (qtd. in Anderson and Speck 24). Tape recording feedback

allows teachers to offer complete thoughts with less effort than writing paragraphs or

even just complete sentences by hand on student essays. More than 20 years later in

1996, LaFontana wrote an essay for English Journal proclaiming the great benefits she

and her students reaped from using taped comments. The four examples of her spoken

comments in her essay each come in at over 50 words. These complete-sentence

summaries of errors and praise “make it possible for me to take a more holistic approach

to student papers instead of getting lost in a mass of detail” (72). Despite these benefits,

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suffice it to say this method has not exactly superceded the handwritten comments in

most classrooms. Loel Kim thinks perhaps “collecting audiotapes along with copies of

student assignments, keeping track of them, and then retaining them is too cumbersome”

(308). Similar to managing cassettes, I have collected sets of research notecards from

nearly 100 seniors at a time, and carrying the bag of cards around can be unwieldy at

best. Despite the burden on teachers who use cassettes, the students—in a study by

Yarbro and Angevine—said they “felt they received more personal attention from the

instructor” with voice comments (396, qtd. in Kim 308). At the end of her essay,

LaFontana concedes some of the downfalls of her tape-recording system: students forget

tapes, her own slips of the tongue, and having to correct at home (73). So while the

taped comments have some benefits for both teachers and students, the drawbacks are

considerable.

Students enjoy the personal tone from recorded comments, and an even more

personal way to assess writing is to actually meet with students to discuss papers. The

case for writing conferences is a strong one, with Donald Murray and Nancie Atwell

leading those charges. Another voice for conferencing, Donald Graves, suggests teachers

stray from just correcting errors: “Eight years after they have introduced quotation marks,

teachers are still correcting errors as the student packs his bags for college” (276).

Graves goes so far as to suggest three conferences, each with a different focus:

Conference 1 would look at discovering a subject, Conference 2 looks at focus and

organization, and Conference 3 identifies more specific mechanical errors (Graves 276).

With a course load of 135 students or more, how many teachers can address writing on

such a personal level when actual face time is necessary? Can a teacher manage over 400

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writing conferences on a single essay? Will the rest of the curriculum suffer if a teacher’s

course is not solely focused on composition, and s/he has other goals and benchmarks to

attend to? Barbara Monroe cites a thread on an NCTE-sponsored listserv about how

much time English teachers spend on grading papers and planning: “Those who

responded averaged 15 hours per week outside of class for both,” with the better part

assumedly spent grading (Owen and Monroe 103). If the majority of the 15 hours were

spent actually planning, teachers would probably have more successful classes.

In order to best utilize our time, teachers have had to adapt, borrow and create

ways to get work back to students more quickly. Do we conference, take the minimalist

approach, tape record, or use a grading grid? Stephen Heller, a high school teacher,

learned—as most English teachers do—that in waiting too long to return papers, “The

identified mistakes in the writing were too far removed from the lessons to have the

learning impact we wanted them to have” (Perry 115). He made it his goal to return

papers within one to two days after the students submitted them. He does not detail how

he does this, but instead raises more pedagogical questions about why one should do this.

Rather than committing to a failsafe approach to grading quickly, Heller offers this

advice: do not “spend more time on the paper than the student did” (116). While

brilliant, this advice is vague at best. Maybe the most important suggestion Heller makes

is one he attributes to a colleague, Bill Fritz, “Give the students enough feedback to bring

the paper up to the next grade, not to the A paper” (117). Surely this is a beneficial

philosophy for new and veteran teachers alike who struggle over how much to write.

If we were to adapt Heller’s approach, returning essays quickly by saying less but

helping students to get more out of it, perhaps teachers could assign more writing and see

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the transference of suggestions on one essay then utilized in the next. With more

computers in schools, teachers may be able to use technology to get work back more

quickly. In a study appearing in The Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, Dixon,

Cassady, Cross and Williams issued two AP-style prompts to classes. For Advanced

Placement, much of the students’ success comes from skilled writing under timed

situations. All the students wrote the first response, and for the second response some

typed while others wrote once again. They found that “when gifted boys used word

processors to respond to a writing prompt, they composed better essays than when they

were required to handwrite them” (188). The boys saw an 83% increase in the number of

words when they typed their responses, while the girls who wrote and then typed

produced a similar number of words. If teachers can utilize a school’s computer lab more

frequently, some of the comments about elaboration on some essays may be needed less

frequently. But just typing the essays is not enough. Students need to know what they

did well and what they can do to improve on the next essay.

Most English teachers would concur that writing a series of drafts helps students

to improve. Also, teachers would much rather read a student’s typed work than his/her

handwriting, especially if the student is working in a timed situation. If focused

comments “couched in polite language” works for students (Rubin 386), and technology

has been seen to improve time spent grading, then the composite picture begins to come

together. According to Sydell Rabin, “If the ultimate purpose of evaluation is to improve

learning, the end is not reached when judgment is passed but only when learning begins

(48). We must utilize drafts, but grade them expediently. Teachers have conducted

studies that circle around the main point of my study, but they just begin to look at the

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potential for teachers. If a teacher practices timed writings on a school computer, then

s/he can respond using the available technology on the computer quickly and efficiently

in order to bring students to that next level. At this point, like Heller said, it is about

bringing the student to the next level, not to the top level, with each successive draft.

The closest work in the field I examined comes from Thomas Krucli, a high

school English teacher who has been using Microsoft Word and its Insert Comment

function to develop student writing. He used CD-RW technology to collect student work,

record voice comments, insert hyperlinks, and type responses to student work, claiming

that it “allows the teacher to provide more feedback for students in the same amount of

time it takes to grade a paper in the traditional manner” (48). Rather than take the same

amount of time as handwritten methods, I intended to see if inserting typed comments or

providing recorded voice comments in specific areas of student essays would improve

their writing on a second draft. I also intended to see if one of these methods proved to

be more expedient than the other. In previous studies, students have really taken to voice

comments. In Kim’s study, a student said, “To me it was like I was right there working

with the teacher—it wasn’t as formal or conventional…it was more like a one-on-one”

(324). In Krucli’s study, he used the AutoText function to prewrite “my most frequently

used feedback comments and then copy and save them for future use. Now I can provide

comments that are not only meaningful and interactive but time efficient as well” (48).

So Krucli used both the voice and typed comments on the same papers, along with

hyperlinks for grammar suggestions. I looked at how one of these might be used with a

limited correction scope to better student writing and improve the time it takes to grade

student essays. While Krucli used CD-RW technology, I would imagine that some of the

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same problems would arise as they did with the taped comments of the 1970s and 1980s:

making sure the students have their CDs and having to restart for misspeaks.

In 2006, Debbie Perry and Mike Smithmier used Krucli’s idea to develop peer-

editing practices in their classrooms, again utilizing the Insert Comment function. They

did not use the voice comments, but did track changes using this function on Word. It

did seem though that in their study peers looked more at mechanics issues over

organization and style issues, citing page numbers from the grammar handbook in their

typed comments (24). Revision includes more than editing; students should see how they

can make their thesis stronger through diction, organization and logic.

For my study, students saved the work in shared folders on the school’s hard

drive, looking at and listening to my typed and spoken comments on their essays. I only

commented on three issues: thesis development, thesis support, and sentence variety. I

hoped that with a limited scope, students could address these changes with their second

drafts. Also, rather than marking brief imperative comments as handwritten remarks on

their drafts, I spoke and typed complete sentences, which have tended to garner more

favorable responses from students than demanding change through brief, fragmented

comments done by hand. Can teachers use grading time more efficiently through the use

of these functions? Would students make changes more effectively with limited

comments done thoroughly? Would the tone that accompanies typed and voice

comments help students to see the teacher as a reader rather than a judge involved in the

writing process? Perhaps if teachers used the available technology and the research about

writing feedback symbiotically they could streamline the grading process while getting

better results from their students.

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The Participants

The class that participated in the study consists of 27 students from a working-

class background. The participants are enrolled in an AP Literature and Composition

course as seniors at Joliet West High School. They have taken practice AP exams before,

so the format had been practiced before. The course consists of two African-American

students, twenty-four white students and one bi-racial student.

Methodology

In order to carry out this research project in which I intended to examine the

efficiency of typed comments vs. voice comments on student essays as well as the

effectiveness of these comments in producing successful essay revision, the students first

needed to read a text for which they could do this. In January, they read Kurt Vonnegut’s

Slaughterhouse-Five. The book is approximately 250 pages in length, and they had three

weeks to read this text. During their reading, the students examined Vonnegut’s use of

irony and allusion, and looked at the autobiographical aspects in the novel.

The students completed the reading by the end of the third week of February.

Because this is an AP course, I continually give AP-style writing prompts to which the

students respond to make them more comfortable with the actual testing process. In this

case, I used a prompt from an AP review book. I chose a pre-existing prompt rather than

creating one of my own because the reliability of the prompt would undoubtedly be

higher. On the AP test, the third (and final) question of the free-response portion asks

students to read a prompt and then choose from a list of texts they provide (or a text of

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comparable literary merit the student chooses) to answer the prompt. I chose a prompt

that included Slaughterhouse-Five as one of the text options. The prompt appeared as

follows:

The most important themes in literature are sometimes developed in

scenes in which a death or deaths take place. Choose a novel or

play and write a well-organized essay in which you show how a

specific death scene helps to illuminate the meaning of the work as a

whole. Avoid plot summary.

While the prompt sheet included a list of 32 works, I clearly bracketed Slaughterhouse-

Five for their response.

When the students finished the novel, I brought them to one of the writing labs in

our school, a room equipped with 30 computers. Each student has a specific account on

his/her “H” drive that contains all of the work they have done at school over the last four

years. The students logged in, and I distributed the prompts to each student after having

reviewed the instructions. I asked them to do the following:

1. Finish the essay today, no matter how it looks when the 40-minute limit is up. I

suggested this to maintain an equal opportunity for each student to answer the

prompt and to emphasize the 40-minute average per answer on the actual AP test.

2. Underline the thesis of the essay. This helped for my comments when I knew

specifically which sentence had the thesis. We worked all year on explicit thesis

statements; the students have not focused as much attention on implicit theses.

3. Save the essay to two places: The “H” drive so they have their own copy, and the

“S” drive, which contains a folder with each of their ID numbers individually. By

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using this option, the students can save their work, and I can open this folder due

to access I have been granted by our technology specialists.

4. Print two copies of the essay. This was done to help my peer grader, Janice

Sheehan, be able to read their essays and identify their success in the three areas I

identified previously: explicit thesis statement, thesis support, and sentence

variety and complexity. I kept the second copy just in case something happened

to the original one saved on the network.

The students typed during the 40 minutes and maintained a quiet atmosphere

while working. Only one student was absent and she typed the essay the next day

under the same directions.

Responding to Student Work

Within two weeks of the students completing the first draft of the essays, I set

aside a block of time to complete my comments in one session. To determine which

students received voice comments and which students received typed comments, I went

with a blind draw, splitting the students into two groups by looking at the folder

arrangement in the Shared folder. There were three rows of folders identified by six-digit

ID numbers. I chose the first thirteen folders counting down the first four columns, with

one folder in the fifth column. This method prevented me from following alphabetical or

any other recognizable order. The remaining fourteen students received voice comments.

For the students on whose paper I inserted voice comments I did the following:

1. Opened the file on the “S” drive and read the essay without timing myself.

2. Started the timer after a first read through so I could get an understanding of the

student’s response. I only wanted to gauge how long I took to make comments,

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not how long it took me to read the essays. While the timer ran, I determined

what parts of the essay necessitated responses.

3. Inserted voice comment by highlighting a passage (for example a part of the

thesis), clicked on “Insert,” then “Comment,” then “Voice Comment.”

4. Recorded a comment using a microphone plugged into the USB port on the

computer, and I clicked on the red “Record” button to record the comment and

save it to the paper. An audio icon appears near the highlighted area of text.

5. Moved on to thesis support and then sentence complexity/variety after inserting a

voice comment for the thesis. For the third category, I looked at sentences that

could be combined and sentences that began with a repetitive structure such as

“subject-verb” for a few sentences in a row or ones that used the same clause such

as “Another point Vonnegut makes is…” and then repeated again in the next

sentence. Often I recommended that the students take a look at the entire paper to

see if my suggestion could apply to other parts of the paper as well. Once I

completed the third comment I stopped the watch and recorded the time.

For the students on whose paper I inserted typed comments, I followed the same

process except to insert a typed comment, I clicked on “Insert,” then “Comment,” and

then “New Comment.” A bubble appeared on the right side and I then typed my

suggestions in the bubble. To insert the second and third comments, I simply highlighted

other passages and did the same thing. The margins shift to accommodate the added text

but it does nothing to page breaks. The font just becomes slightly smaller.

Throughout both types of comments, I timed myself and recorded my times on a

chart for each student labeled only with the ID number. This chart reflects how long each

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paper took to assess. Typically, teachers tend to write brief, imperative comments such

as “combine these two sentences” and “change the thesis.” Having read studies regarding

tone, I utilized the concept of couching my statements in polite phrasing. Examples

include, “You might want to…” or “Maybe you could….” I did this both for typed and

voice comments. When I finished each essay I printed the version with my comments so

I could see what I suggested for them and could recognize the changes they made for the

second draft.

During the time I graded, commented and timed my work, Janice Sheehan—who

teaches a second section of AP English 4 with similar students—reviewed my students’

essays and looked at those same three areas, giving the students a score of 1-6 in each of

the three categories: Advanced (5-6), Proficient (3-4), and Basic (1-2). I, too, gave the

students a score using the same scale. Appendix B is the sheet I used to track their scores

and my comments. We did not share scores until after the second draft had been

collected. Janice never saw my comments. For the second draft, she graded the essays as

if she were seeing them for the first time with only her scores from draft one to guide her.

Revision Preparation

After assessing all the essays, I led a one-class in-service on how to use the

“Comment” feature so students understood how to access their essays and how to look at

and then make changes. My classroom has an LCD projector hooked up to the computer,

so I can project documents from my computer and show them on the screen for the

students. I used a sample essay and showed them how to review my suggestions and how

to make changes to their papers in order to resubmit them with the revisions. The LCD

projector also has speakers so students could hear my sample voice comments. I did not

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want the lag time to be too disparate between the voice and typed comment groups once

they returned to the computer lab, so the more understanding they had of the technology

prior to returning the better. I did not know which students received which type of

comments yet, so I explained they would find out which comments they received once

they returned to the lab.

Revising and Editing

When we returned to the computer lab, the students sat in front of computers each

equipped with headphones. They opened their essays with my comments and began

making the changes they felt would improve their essays based on my recommendations.

I initially allowed for a second class period for revision in case the students needed more

time but no one needed more time after the 50-minute class period. Although revision on

this scale does not fall in line with AP testing since the students have only one two-hour

session to write three responses, the College Board course recommendation suggests the

students have multiple opportunities throughout the year to revise essays.

Once the students finished making whatever changes they felt necessary, I asked

them to save the second draft to the same folder, this time with a 2 in front of the original

document number so I could easily identify each draft. After saving their essays I asked

them to print two copies so both Janice and I could re-score the essays. I asked that they

remove the comments I included—a bubble on the right side of the essay for typed

comments and an audio icon in the right margin for voice comments—in order that Janice

would assess the second draft looking at how successful it is without seeing exactly what

I recommended.

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Assessing Draft Two

Once the students had all saved their second drafts to their individual folders, I

needed to assess this new work as to what changes students made from the first draft.

Since the printed version did not include any comments, I needed to assess the essays by

having the first draft in my hand, then opening their second draft on a computer so I

could either read or hear my initial comments to determine what had changed and how

successful those changes were. I needed to take into account not only the highlighted

portions of text but also the rest of the essay in case students took my suggestions and

applied them to other parts of the essay. I did not time the re-scoring as it did not matter

for the purposes of this study. By the end I had three versions of the students’ essays:

Version 1 is their first draft with no comments; Version 2 is their first draft with my

comments (in the case of voice comments, I could see what parts of the text I highlighted

though I saw no specific words); Version 3 is their revised draft with my comments

eliminated.

Peer Revision

Janice and I have shared a room and an AP curriculum all year, each of us

teaching one section of the course, so I felt comfortable choosing her to maintain inter-

rater reliability. When the students finished draft 1, I gave Janice the class set of essays

with their ID numbers at the top. Appendix A contains a sample of the sheet I gave her

for tracking her scores. The essays were not separated into voice and typed comment

essays; they were just issued as a class set. I did not need to wait for her results in order

to move to the revision stage with the class. When I gave her the second draft, they were

clean copies as well. She used the same sheet for assessing the second draft, looking to

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see how the students improved overall for this revised piece. Again, she did not know

which essays received voice or typed comments, nor did she know what my comments

were, so she could only assess them on what she saw. Janice made no comments on

student essays for the first draft.

Post-session Follow-up Survey

After all the students had finished their second drafts and after I had scored both, I

distributed a survey asking the students to comment on the experience, to rate it versus

handwritten comments, and to discuss how they personally work best in terms of revising

essays. This survey appears in Appendixes C and D.

Post-session Follow-up Interviews (Group and Individual)

Having read the students’ reactions to the experience, I interviewed a few of them

to get a more detailed reaction to the process. I spoke with students who received voice

comments and students who received typed comments. The gist of my questions covered

their preference vs. receiving handwritten comments, the impact of tone, the effect of the

novelty of the experience, and their suggestions were I to do this again in the future.

Data Results

Time Involved in Making Comments

My hypothesis entering the experiment was that voice comments would take me

longer. I based this on my ability to type quickly (between 75-80 wpm). I worried about

a number of issues related to voice comments: the recording part would be too daunting; I

would constantly have to rerecord my comments; and speaking clearly and effectively

Newman 20

would require me to speak more slowly. According to the results of the study as shown

in Table 1, my hypothesis was incorrect.

Table 1: Assessment Time

Voice comments saved more than two minutes on average off the assessment

time. The typed comments took as long as 8:20 min. because one particular essay was

exceptionally long and repetitive, and I had to determine exactly which part to highlight

before typing a comment. The quickest typed response came in at 4:28 min., this due in

large part to the brevity of the essay and the frequent errors; I did not lack for something

to highlight. The voice comments took as long as 5:34 min., the longest one being my

first essay and I had to rerecord, and as quickly as 2:56 min. because I knew exactly what

I needed to address for each of the three categories after my initial reading of this essay.

Peer Scoring Differential

While I trusted Janice with scoring my class’s essays, I worried that our scores may turn

out vastly different. The essays could receive a score of 3-18, depending on their success

in each of the three given areas: Thesis, Thesis Support, and Sentence Complexity and

Variety. My fears of disparity were largely unfounded, as we had much in common as

shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Draft 1 Scoring

Typed Comments Voice Comments Time Differential Avg. Time Per Essay to Grade

6:05 min. per essay 3:59 min. per essay

-2:06 min. for voice

Matching Scores

+/- 1 +/-2 +/-3 +/-4 +/-5

5 15 6 1 0 0

Newman 21

In examining the results from my scores compared with Janice’s scores from draft

1, it is obvious that we share much of the same grading philosophy. We balanced the

scoring well in that neither of us consistently scored the students higher than the other.

Some of this may be due to teaching the same type of students and working closely in

how we teach AP. The differences became more apparent in the second draft as shown in

Table 3. A number of reasons could explain these differences.

Table 3: Draft 2 Scoring

Considering the scores were much closer in draft 1, I would suggest that my being

able to see the changes I recommended made it more obvious for me to see the changes

the students made in the essays. Janice graded the second drafts without the benefit of

seeing my comments on draft 1. When comparing the scores from both drafts, I had

score changes of considerable points, with one student going from a 2 to a 6 on the thesis

statement alone. Janice did not have such dramatic increases in scores. This contributed

to the five scores that increased we differed on by four-to-five points. This differential

did not exist in draft 1.

Examining the Score Differential

The average scores for the essays were not so different for the first draft, but after

commenting the results showed significant gains for voice comments. Table 4 shows the

considerable impact voice comments had on student performance. Their percent increase

from draft 1 nearly doubled, from a 1.38 average score increase for typed comments

Matching Scores

+/- 1 +/-2 +/-3 +/-4 +/-5

5 8 4 5 1 4

Newman 22

versus a 2.07 average score increase for voice comments. The perfect scores did not

count for calculating the increase, but they were factored into the average scores.

Draft 1 Avg. Score Draft 2 Avg. Score % Increase from Draft 1 to 2VOICE 12.57 14.64 9%TYPED 12.00 13.38 5%

Table 4: Average Scores and Score Increase

Though Table 4 shows the marked increase in scores for voice comments, Table 5

breaks down those increases. While the thesis support score shows the biggest increase,

it is important to note that the voice comments increased nearly a full point for the thesis

statements. Comments for the thesis apply only to the introduction, so perhaps revision

of this statement and the assessment of it were easier because it was located in a

particular area and would not be found elsewhere in the essay as thesis support and

sentence variety and complexity revisions would be.

Table 5: Score Differential by Category

TYPED VOICE OVERALLAvg. Thesis Score Increase from Draft 1 to Draft 2 (not including perfect scores)

+.63 +.91 +.28Differential favoring voice between drafts 1 & 2

Avg. Thesis Support Score Increase from Draft 1 to Draft 2 (not including perfect scores)


Avg. Sentence Complexity/ Variety Score Increase from Draft 1 to Draft 2 (not including perfect scores)


Survey Results and Interviews

Newman 23

After completing this study, I issued surveys to the students to determine what

they found helpful both specifically in this exercise and regarding writing in general.

Appendixes C and D show the surveys; four of the six questions on the surveys were the

same for each group, with the remaining two questions focused more specifically on

voice or typed comments. The surveys, as described in Tables 6 and 7, revealed helpful

information both for this study and for further analysis. Twenty-seven students

completed the surveys.

Table 6: Comparing Typed and Voice Comments to Handwritten Comments

RECEIVED TYPED COMMENTS

RECEIVED VOICE COMMENTS

This Way Feels More Personal Than Reading Handwritten Feedback

4/13 8/14

Revising This Way Is More Difficult Than Reading Handwritten Comments

1/13 4/14

The Tone Is Better This Way Versus Reading Shorter Handwritten Feedback

9/13 9/14

The information in Table 6 comes from questions I asked in the surveys that

required students to reflect on their experiences with handwritten comments. Because the

students did not have experience with both voice and typed comments, I asked them to

compare what both groups had in common as prior knowledge—handwritten comments

on their writing—to the new way they experienced in this study. The first response

reveals the strong personal connection students made to the voice comments. While the

second question shows how more students found the voice comments difficult to use for

revision versus handwritten comments, this number still means that 10/14 found voice

comments easier to use for revision than handwritten comments. The students in both

Newman 24

voice and typed comment groups preferred the tone through the computer versus the tone

in handwritten comments.

In Table 7, I took the responses from the questions that appeared on both sets of

surveys and summarized the results by grouping all 27 responses together. These

questions asked more general questions about revision as opposed to the specific

questions about the typed or voice comments. Their responses would prove useful for

further study as well as prove helpful for understanding the outcome of this study.

Table 7: General Feedback for Both Groups (27 Students)

Students Who Prefer When Teachers Focus on a Few Big Errors

18

Students Who Prefer When Teachers Mark Everything

9

Students Who Believe They Would Improve If They Had 1:1 Meetings

16

Students Who Believe They Would Improve with More Peer Editing

13

Students Who Believe They Would Improve If They Wrote More Often

20

Students Who Believe They Would Improve with Less Writing/More Feedback

3

Students Who Believe They Would Improve with More Chances to Revise

17

Students Who Believe They Would Improve If They Received More Praise

7

Table 7 brings a few key issues to light. In general, the students believe their

writing would improve if they wrote more frequently with chances for revision. Also,

students favor feedback with focused comments on larger issues as opposed to comments

on every error. The single-digit results reveal how students do not want to see every

error marked, do not want to write less and do not want more praise in order to write

Newman 25

better. More than half of the students also believe writing conferences would help them

improve their writing overall.

I followed up the surveys with a few personal interviews, and the students with

the voice comments explained the process to me from their perspective: they listened to

the comment once just to get a feel for the pure novelty of the experience, then followed

up with a second and sometimes a third listen to be sure they understood what I was

asking. One student, a musician, explained that he enjoyed the voice comments because

he is an audio learner and this catered more directly to his learning style. Two students

discussed with me the issue of tone in that hearing me make suggestions had the effect of

a conference in a way. One student claimed she did not want to let me down by not

making the suggestions I offered. She further elaborated on this by saying that it felt

more personal with voice comments over handwritten ones, and this connection led her to

take the comments more seriously. The students with typed comments explained that

they wished they had received papers with comments like this in the past because it

eliminated misreads due to poor teacher penmanship, and they said they enjoyed the

thoroughness of the comments with the complete sentences. Some students asked for

more than the three comments so they could find out what I thought about other parts of

the essay.

Not all the responses were favorable, however. Negative aspects of the voice

comments included the “creepiness” of hearing me in headphones and the lack of direct

personal reference with the voice comments. I graded them blind by using only their ID

numbers, so I could not personalize each response. For the typed comments, not much

Newman 26

feedback came back on the negative side other than wanting more comments than the

three I provided.

Analysis

Revisiting my initial hypothesis, I predicted that I would see better results from

typed comments because I type quickly and because students would see my suggestions

right in front of them without having to listen to my comments repeatedly to determine

what I wanted to see on draft 2. The feedback from my interviews with students and

from the surveys helps to explain the increase in scores from the voice comments. While

only one student made specific mention of being an audio learner, it would not surprise

me to learn that more than one student in a class may learn best in this style. Also,

studies show 1:1 conferencing as the optimal way to assess writing and to help writers

develop. Though I did not conference with these students, the inclusion of voice

comments may provide the same benefits. If the students felt even some type of

responsibility to make changes because I had asked them to do so, not scribbled

comments as such, perhaps I benefited from the personal, intangible aspects of

conferencing.

If I were to use the voice comments more regularly, I would take advantage of

personalizing the comments. Some students I interviewed explained how they would

have preferred the voice comments more if it sounded like I knew I was talking to them.

Due to the time involved in 1:1 conferencing, speaking to students through recorded

comments by using their names, referencing their other essays, or adding other personal

touches may improve the writing even more. My rapport with the class appears to play a

Newman 27

role in the voice comments’ effectiveness also because one student felt that she did not

want to let me down when she heard the voice comments. That issue has never come up

before with handwritten comments.

Considering the developments of the students who received typed comments, I

would surmise that they reacted as they typically would to handwritten comments, only

they could eliminate the illegibility issues that plague the comments of many English

teachers, myself included. Aside from this difference, one particular divergence I noted

between the two would be the changes made to parts of the essay on which I did not

comment, even though I asked the students to revisit other parts of their essays to see

additional examples of what I suggested they change. The students who received typed

comments did far less of this than those who received voice comments. Though I tailored

the comments to the individual papers, a suggestion I would make on an essay in either

category might look (for typed) or sound (for voice) like this:

Take a look at the way you start this [the highlighted] sentence. It’s a subject

followed by a linking verb, and it’s something I see throughout not only the

paragraph but the paper. Try to start with some different clauses like you did in

the second paragraph [I would cite an example]. Try changing this one and then

look for other changes to make throughout your paper too.

This suggestion asks the student to look at other parts of the paper, and the students with

typed comments typically changed only the highlighted sentence rather than improved

other parts of the essay. This even applied to the few students who received perfect

scores on draft 1. They did not know their scores after the first draft, and those students

with a score of 18 made changes just like students who scored much lower and still

Newman 28

managed to improve their essays. The perfect essays actually caused me some difficulty

in knowing exactly what to comment on while the clock ran when I was timing my

comments. I do not normally consider student essays perfect; however, in timed writing

for AP prompts, a student’s work does not have to be perfect to receive the highest score.

Some of these AP students received a 5 on the English Language and Composition AP

exam as juniors, so I know that students in this class are capable of writing what the exam

graders consider top-scoring submissions.

When I began making the comments under timed conditions, I struggled with a

few aspects of this method. Sometimes I sought frantically for areas to comment on

without restarting the timer or revisiting an essay later. When I typed comments, they

flowed fairly well; if I wanted to change what I had typed, I could do so seamlessly by

deleting and typing again. With the voice comments, any error meant I had to delete the

entire comment and start again. Also, I rarely assess student writing blindly. Appendixes

E and F show the comments I made for myself as I assessed each student’s writing. The

italicized font marks the comments I made after assessing draft 2. Sometimes I made

notes for myself as a teacher, and sometimes I commented on the process of assessing the

writing. Normally, I have a student’s body of work to reflect on and see how s/he is

progressing as a writer, often referencing that student’s development from the previous

paper. In doing this study, I knew each student only as an ID number. This eliminated

much of the personal, specific references I might have included otherwise. However, this

benefited me as well because I did not assess the paper with the student’s personality

attached to it.

Newman 29

With 20 of the 27 students surveyed believing that they would improve in their

writing if they wrote more often, it appears that teachers are not assigning enough

writing. Looking further into this idea through the other questions on the survey, 17 of

the students want more opportunities to revise, and 18 want teachers to say more about

less. Though a class of AP seniors is not the typical collection of students in a given

classroom, these are the students who have typically been successful and have the

awareness to know how they might best succeed at the college level in terms of

composition. To do more writing and revise more frequently, not to mention the 16 of 27

students who believe their writing would improve with 1:1 conferences, a teacher would

never have time to tend to all these needs. However, by using voice comments, a teacher

could say more about the larger concerns in a student’s writing in less time. By making

the comments personal, the teacher could maintain some of the warmth and personality

students appreciate in conferencing. Additionally, the opportunities to revise would be

less taxing when the students resubmit the essays because in Microsoft Word’s Insert

Comment function, the teacher can track the changes made between drafts 1 and 2. Also,

a teacher can ask students to use the highlight function to draw attention to any changes

s/he made from draft 1 to draft 2.

In reviewing the results of this study, I have spent a great deal of time looking at

which style produced better results from the students: typed comments or voice

comments, but the other outcome I intended to examine was how using these two would

affect the time a teacher spends grading compositions. With the voice comments, I

averaged two minutes less than the six minutes I spent on typed comments. Four minutes

for a two-page essay is not overwhelming. This averages out to less than two hours for a

Newman 30

class of 25 students. Though I did not measure the time it would take me to handwrite

comments, I feel safe in assuming that to include the amount of words I used in both

typed and voice responses by handwriting them—and making them legible—would take

me much longer than the four minutes I averaged with voice comments and the six I

averaged with typed comments. Once I become more comfortable with voice comments

and the novelty wears off for the students, this does become a viable option for assessing

writing. In fact, I felt restricted with only the three common categories I assessed in their

writing; the students also asked that I add more comments than the three, but overall did

feel that the three categories I did examine were helpful.

Teachers may feel restricted by using the Insert Comment function by thinking

that they have to remain at school to do this. The voice comments take considerably

more memory than do the typed comments. Each essay with voice comments took 4MB

to 8MB of memory, while the typed comments came in at 25KB to 30KB. I saved an

entire class of 27 essays with voice and typed comments to my 1GB flash drive with no

problems. While I did do the commenting at school, I did not have to do this. For voice

comments, a quiet spot, a USB port, and a microphone are all that are needed. For typed

comments, nothing extra is needed.

Reviewing how the process went, the peer scores from Janice helped me for draft

1 in that we both assessed their writing from a common point. Appendix G shows the

score comparison between Janice’s scores and mine for draft 1 and draft 2, respectively.

These scores are broken down in various ways in Tables 2 through 5. The similarities

between our scores encouraged me heading into draft 2. The problem arose for draft 2

when I had the advantage of seeing how students addressed my specific concerns; Janice

Newman 31

could only guess what my suggestions might have been when she evaluated the second

draft. Though she would have a better feel for how I assessed draft 2 had she seen or

heard my comments, I appreciated having her view draft 2 with no comments because

she could see if indeed the paper was better overall. A student may have made changes

from the first to the second draft, but did those changes improve the paper? Janice saw

the differences and sometimes she was unimpressed with the differences, giving the same

scores as they received in a given category on draft 1. At other times she saw not only

editing changes, which I rarely suggested save but in the thesis, but actually saw evidence

of major revisions in thought. Though her situation was not ideal, it helped me in that

she served as an outside grader unaffected by whether or not students had typed or voice

comments on their essays, and unaffected by knowing the identity behind each paper.

She could only comment on the differences between the drafts. After working with a

peer grader for the first time, I would certainly try this again because it caused me to

reevaluate my scoring of essays and confirmed for me that I am looking for the same

patterns as another English teacher.

Conclusion

In this study I set out to determine two things: would a teacher spend more time

commenting on student work by inserting typed comments or recording voice comments,

and which method would produce more effective revisions for students. The results

clearly show that students had more success with the voice comments rather than the

typed comments. Their initial reaction to the voice comments was one of novelty, but

after they got past this, they used these comments to improve their work. Of course, if a

Newman 32

teacher regularly commented in this way, the newness of the experience would subside

and the students would just accept this as a common practice.

Most teachers do not have the opportunity to have a peer grader assess their

students’ essays; however, most teachers do have the opportunity to utilize their schools’

technology to make more time for themselves. If studies have shown that English

teachers spend an average of 15 hours per week outside of the school day grading writing

and planning, with grading assuming the preponderance of the time, perhaps using the

technology can cut down on this time outside of school spent grading. The image of the

English teacher with the red pen circling comma splices and writing “cs” above the red

circle does not have to persist. If this problem occurs one time and yet no paragraph uses

transitory phrases, a teacher’s time would be better spent working on that issue with the

student rather than hoping s/he knows what to do with a “cs” comment. English teachers

are frequently plagued by illegibility due to the regularity of writing on students’ papers,

and typing and/ or recording comments eliminates that problem.

Technology in the classroom can only improve over time. If teachers invest the

hours and school districts encourage the training, the grading workload could be

streamlined. English teachers will never escape the burden of assessing student writing,

but they can take advantage of the available options to improve their efficiency and

effectiveness. For a teacher to assess a class set of three-page essays can go very quickly

if a teacher only writes a question mark for a curious thought, a check for a good idea,

and ends the commentary with a “Good job!” at the end. If the teacher never asks for

revision, then how much will the student’s writing improve for the next essay? Also,

teachers can sacrifice their sanity to commenting on three-page essays for 30 minutes

Newman 33

each because they believe no error should go unpunished. If indeed our job is to make

students better writers, then we must ask them to revise essays, not just edit the

punctuation. To evaluate subsequent drafts, however, we must also have the time.

Utilizing the Insert Comment function to add voice comments can help with this.

Though I did not compare the time spent grading by hand versus both voice and

typed comments, this may be an area for further study. I looked to assess the

technological opportunities available to teachers because most have a fair understanding

of how long grading by hand takes them, and they probably know what effect their

comments have on their students as it currently stands. I wanted to measure the effect

comments can have, not just the effect they currently have. Some teachers may be wary

of working with the Insert Comment function to grade writing because of potential

obstacles: lack of computer access at school, lack of mobility in grading anywhere one

chooses, or discomfort with the technology. Students deprived of the appropriate

technology would be a difficult issue to overcome, but the other two issues can be

handled. Entire class sets of essays can be saved onto a flash drive, and a teacher can

then assess the writing with nothing more than a laptop for typed comments, and would

only need to bring a microphone for voice comments. The microphone I used cost

$14.95. As for discomfort with technology, teachers must continue to adapt to the

changing classroom both technologically and pedagogically as they have always done.

For additional research in this area, teachers may want to evaluate how well

students can use the Insert Comment function for peer evaluations. I was surprised to

learn that half of my class cited peer editing as an option that, if done more frequently,

would help them to become better writers. This often depends on the skill level of

Newman 34

students in terms of how effective peer comments are, but if the class gets accustomed to

writing for a larger audience rather than just the teacher, perhaps both the writing and the

comments about writing will improve. The use of Blackboard—a web-based service for

posting essays and assignments, among other things—could prove useful for this type of

exchange. The Insert Comment function allows an author and/or grader to view the

changes made between drafts. I did not use this function for my study but could have.

Other aspects of this field of study that could prove useful may be how personalizing the

voice comments would benefit students. The students I interviewed on whose paper I

inserted voice comments claimed a personal reaction to hearing my voice. Some of these

students claimed they felt it more imperative to consider my spoken comments over what

I would normally write on their essays. The ages of students involved in this type of

assessment may produce different results as well in terms of how they react to the voice

of the teacher. The perspectives teachers could take on assessment and revision for

composition were inexhaustible before computers became common in education; now,

these new technological possibilities can only provide teachers with so many more

opportunities to make better writers of our students.

Newman 35

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Newman 38

APPENDIX A

Peer Grader Score Sheet

ID# Advanced Proficient BasicDraft 1 6 5 4 3 2 1Thesis StatementThesis SupportComplexity/ VarietyTotal Score: Comments:




Newman 39

APPENDIX B

Drafts One and Two Evaluation Grid

TYPED COMMENTSID# Score

(1-6)Comments:

Thesis Statement:Thesis Support:Complexity/ Variety:Total Time:Total Score:


(1-6)Comments:



(1-6)Comments:



(1-6)Comments:


Newman 40

APPENDIX C

Student Evaluation of Voice Comments

Please answer the questions below. If you need to clarify a response, please do so next to COMMENT or use the back of the paper if necessary.

1. Write a “T” for True or an “F” for False next to each statement:

a. _____Hearing the teacher’s voice makes the comments feel more personal.COMMENT:

b. _____Merely hearing the suggestions is difficult because I prefer to see the comments.COMMENT:

c. _____I get a better feel for the tone of the teacher’s comments by hearing them instead of by reading them.COMMENT:

2. Please circle the answer that bests agrees with your opinion: When I receive comments back on an essay I know I WON’T HAVE the opportunity to revise, I usually

a. Don’t read the comments.b. Skim through the comments.c. I read all the comments but don’t really remember them for next time.d. I consider the suggestions for my next essay.

COMMENT:

3. Please circle the answer that best agrees with your opinion: When I receive comments back on an essay I know I WILL have the opportunity to revise, I usually

a. Don’t know where to begin but try to figure it out on my own.b. Need to talk with the teacher face-to-face before writing.c. Go over my paper with someone else to help me figure it out.d. Know what I need to do and get it done.

COMMENT:

4. Please circle the answer that best agrees with your opinion: a. I prefer to have a teacher mark every error so I know what I messed up on.b. I prefer a teacher to focus on a few big issues instead of every mistake.c. I prefer a teacher to write a few general comments and a grade.

COMMENT:

5. Please circle all the answers you agree with: I would be a better writer ifa. I wrote more frequently.b. I wrote less frequently but received more feedback.c. I had a chance to revise more frequently.d. I saw more praise on my essays so I know what I’m doing well.e. I could talk with the teacher one-to-one before submitting a final copy.f. We had more peer editing opportunities.

COMMENT:

6. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “never do this again,” 5 being “use it as often as you use written comments” and 10 being “use this on all my future essays,” write a rank for voice comments on the line:_____COMMENT:

Newman 41

APPENDIX D

Student Evaluation of Typed Comments

Please answer the questions below. If you need to clarify a response, please do so next to COMMENT or use the back of the paper if necessary.

1. Write a “T” for True or an “F” for False next to each statement:

a. _____Reading typed comments feels more personal than handwritten ones.COMMENT:

b. _____Revising my essay was more difficult with the computer than with a hard copy.COMMENT:

c. _____I get a better feel for the tone of the teacher’s comments by reading them in complete sentences rather than standard, handwritten margin notes.COMMENT:

2. Please circle the answer that bests agrees with your opinion: When I receive comments back on an essay I know I WON’T HAVE the opportunity to revise, I usually

a. Don’t read the comments.b. Skim through the comments.c. I read all the comments but don’t really remember them for next time.d. I consider the suggestions for my next essay.

COMMENT:

3. Please circle the answer that best agrees with your opinion: When I receive comments back on an essay I know I WILL have the opportunity to revise, I usually

a. Don’t know where to begin but try to figure it out on my own.b. Need to talk with the teacher face-to-face before writing.c. Go over my paper with someone else to help me figure it out.d. Know what I need to do and get it done.

COMMENT:

4. Please circle the answer that best agrees with your opinion: a. I prefer to have a teacher mark every error so I know what I messed up on.b. I prefer a teacher to focus on a few big issues instead of every mistake.c. I prefer a teacher to write a few general comments and a grade.

COMMENT:

5. Please circle all the answers you agree with: I would be a better writer ifa. I wrote more frequently.b. I wrote less frequently but received more feedback.c. I had a chance to revise more frequently.d. I saw more praise on my essays so I know what I’m doing well.e. I could talk with the teacher one-to-one before submitting a final copy.f. We had more peer editing opportunities.

COMMENT:

6. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “never do this again,” 5 being “use it as often as you use written comments” and 10 being “use this on all my future essays,” write a rank for typed comments on the line:_____COMMENT:

Newman 42

APPENDIX E

Drafts One and Two Evaluation Grid for Typed Comments

TYPED COMMENTSID# 270005 Score

(1-6)Comments:

Could have looked at sentence combining or sentence variety, but chose the variety as the bigger problem. The theme is vaguely captured, but the prompt isn’t directly answered with a death in particular. No changes of significance are made despite recommendations. They’re more rephrasing than improving the essay.

Thesis Statement: 4 4Thesis Support: 3 4Sentence Complexity:

4 4

Total Time: 6:31Total Score: 11 12


(1-6)Comments:

The writer gets caught up with Vonnegut’s life and forgets to explain Dresden in more detail. Sentences are generally complex but fall into a pattern of 1-2 word lead-ins. Thesis brings in Tralfamadorians to make it more focused; other suggestions are largely ignored.


5 5



(1-6)Comments:

The thesis sets up for the atmosphere, but the essay gets into other aspects away from that. The thesis doesn’t entire match up with what’s discussed in the essay. However, it is a good thesis. The thesis is fixed, the suggestions for complexity are evident throughout the paragraph, and the support is helped, but not entirely fixed. It strays some.


5 6



(1-6)Comments:

A long essay that repeats itself frequently. The support contradicts itself at times, and the variety lacks due to the linking verb prevalence in nearly every sentence. Thesis improved and more specific. The linking verbs still exist everywhere; some changes, but too few. Most of the support is the same as well.


3 3


Newman 43

APPENDIX E continued


(1-6)Comments:

The essay is skillfully done, written with complexity and style. While the verb tense shifts frequently, that plays no role in the scoring of the essay here. Word choice suggestion in thesis turns out great. Despite the perfect score I gave, the suggestions I made were acted upon in other parts of the essay, like sentence combining, to make it even better.


6 6



(1-6)Comments:

The idea of one man killing another in the thesis doesn’t really come up in the essay. The sentences are generally diverse, but the lack of commas makes it difficult to detect.Thesis improved, but not much better. Rephrased most of it. Changed other examples of clauses, not just the highlighted one.


4 5



(1-6)Comments:

The thesis is well-developed, the support top-notch, and the sentence complexity well-executed. At times too tricky and indulgent, but overall a successful essay. Perfect thesis score for a timed piece, but the improvements focus the thesis more. Dash revisions and elimination of extraneous information make this the best essay overall.


6 6



(1-6)Comments:

The essay doesn’t really follow the thesis the author sets forth. It’s not really about Roland Weary at all. There is talk about a theme later on, but it’s not cohesive. The changes are minimal and don’t really address all my big problems with the essay.


4 4


Newman 44



(1-6)Comments:

The paper lacked focus and the thesis set up more of a comparison between Valencia’s death and war. The entire purpose of the prompt got lost with this. Great improvements. The commas, in particular, make the paper easier to read. The thesis is more focused as is the support.


3 5



(1-6)Comments:

The thesis is decent, but 1- Derby isn’t a counterpart; 2- the author goes to some strange places with Derby’s character that maybe could’ve been supported in the thesis better. Splices/run-ons a problem. The thesis is more focused, but the other problems still exist: Comma splices in particular. A little with support changed.


4 4



(1-6)Comments:

This essay went very quickly, and I’m guessing it’s because the essay wasn’t entirely accurate, had plot summary, and wasn’t written at a high level. It was straightforward and I didn’t struggle with what to write. The changes were largely ignored. The few that were made did little to make the paper better.


3 3



(1-6)Comments:

Another example of the thesis not telling what the importance is, just showing it will be an important death. Also, the paper repeats much of the same information. Kept exact same thesis, but followed with a sentence that does what I asked. Support still not great, but does even more with my sentence combining suggestion than I intended.


4 5


Newman 45



(1-6)Comments:

The sentences, while frequently complex, fall apart with minor grammar errors. The thesis never actually picks a specific death. The rhetoric is fun, but the logic just doesn’t focus on the prompt. Thesis still doesn’t pick “a death”; The support does improve in that he picks one particular death and adds support. Complexity improved by eliminating more introductory commas.


5 6


Newman 46

APPENDIX F

Drafts One and Two Evaluation Grid for Voice Comments

VOICE COMMENTSID# 470365 Score

(1-6)Score Comments:

As the first essay, I only rerecorded one time. I have to get my thoughts together and see the whole essay before beginning to go through the comments. This essay was excellent and required little support from me. Makes my exact thesis suggestions; changes focus of 1st

body paragraph to fit comments; fixed complexity too.


6 6




The paper is textually inaccurate, and the statements were frequently misspelled or punctuated incorrectly. I tried to focus on getting it all to have a sense of synthesis rather than being so disjointed. Thesis somewhat changed, but not really cohesive yet. Evidence of making changes to other parts of the essay from suggestions.


2 4




I looked at my watch while trying to find ways to work on complexity at 3:15 and really struggled to find examples. The paper is really well done and needed little help in these areas. Paragraph unity was the only area and that’s discussed elsewhere. Thesis changes made; The restructuring and complexity turned out very well. Used all comments.


6 6




The suggestion to add dashes may not fit exactly with sentence complexity as much as with sentence cohesion, so this may need to be revisited in the final draft. Thesis is stronger content-wise but also oddly punctuated; Changes are made by eliminating some of the extra content, but not at the quality of a “6” yet.


5 5


Newman 47

APPENDIX F continued



The paragraphs could’ve blended together near the end because they kept saying the same thing. I focused on repetition in initial phrases for sentences. The thesis changes are different, not better; There are strong attempts at fixing the complexity issue, but the changes are awkwardly phrased.


4 4




Needed to look at the first sentence, and although they aren’t all that long, there are other sentences that need to be reevaluated like this one. Made changes in thesis but still a little convoluted; made changes in intro like I asked; changes occur throughout paper from my suggestions, and complexity is improved in a number of areas.


3 4




Sentences worked well generally speaking. Author just had some basic redundancy issues once or twice to work on. The word change in thesis is effective. The changes made in the thesis support about Weary dreaming of valor, as well as the complexity changes, show the comments helped the author.


5 6




Did have to rerecord one time for the thesis. The thesis is definitely rephrased and somewhat improved, but still wordy. Changes are made in the essay in various parts, and the lack of focus and the contradictions are limited as well.


5 6


Newman 48




Searching for something to say with complexity and rerecording took more time here. Yes, the improvement is made, but the thesis still lacks a little; other changes made are not very significant.


6 6




It’s easier when I have more of the essay in front of me to read when I’m commenting. The particular death and the specific theme are both included. Thesis isn’t phrased wonderfully, but it’s competent. Some extraneous information is a little more focused but not well-phrased. Complexity fixed in areas I asked for.


3 4




Had to rerecord once here. Made big changes to the thesis; it’s improved but still a bit cumbersome. The changes are made very well here and inserted throughout the paper, not just in the part where I asked for changes.


3 5




The focus points were pretty straightforward here, so the answers came quickly. The thesis is adjusted, but the thesis is so simple and obvious. The other changes are minimal and don’t fully address my concerns: for example, rewriting the topic sentences.


5 5


Newman 49




Had trouble searching for sentence complexity again. Overall there was good variety. I don’t think it’s overreacting to go from 2-6 on thesis because the changes are exactly right. Maintains focus on Valencia, eliminated extra material, and some linking verbs are replaced but more effort could happen here.


5 5




Overall, no glaring issues with the sentences, just the fact that two themes were being utilized together. Minor change but good one for thesis; added a lot to the conclusion to focus the paper on the theme that is addressed in the thesis.


6 6


Newman 50

APPENDIX G

Score Sheet for Draft One and Draft Two

DRAFT ONE DRAFT TWOID# TYPED/

VOICEMY

SCOREPEER

SCOREMY

SCOREPEER

SCORE270005 T 11 9 12 9470318 T 15 14 16 15470590 T 14 15 17 16470004 T 11 10 12 10470323 T 18 18 18 18470592 T 10 9 11 10470008 T 18 18 18 18470339 T 9 7 9 7470596 T 7 7 13 8470013 T 12 11 13 10470362 T 8 7 8 7470609 T 11 12 13 13470015 T 12 13 14 13470365 V 17 18 18 18470622 V 7 8 11 9470020 V 18 16 18 18470390 V 15 13 15 13470638 V 12 11 12 12470026 V 8 7 11 8470406 V 13 11 16 11470857 V 11 11 14 13470053 V 16 15 16 15470415 V 9 7 12 7470220 V 9 10 14 11470421 V 15 12 15 12470310 V 10 10 16 12470426 V 16 17 17 18

Newman 51

Date post:	16-Apr-2017
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