An investigation of teachers' written and oral comments on pupils' learning performances in English teaching

Abstract

The research began with the study of teachers' written comments on pupils' written work in an English teaching context. There were several reasons for the selection of the written comment as the subject of an investigation: first, the comment communicates the teacher's response to the pupil's work, and as such it offers a potential source of information to the pupil of relevance to his learning. In addition, written comments, as a form of individualised teaching on an informal day-to-day basis, seem likely to represent a significant portion of the total feedback received by any one pupil in relation to his individual performance. Third, to date, teachers' comments have not figured to any real extent as an area of research. Where they have, they have tended to be part of a wider study which did not involve the conceptualisation of comments as providing instructive information of value to the learner. For all of these reasons, an investigation of the character and possible contribution of the written comment to pupil learning seemed a potentially worthwhile area for research. Hence, the written comment is the focus of the first part of this study. Though the work began with the written comment, in time the questions emerging from the initial investigation suggested the value of extending the field to include a detailed study of the relationship between the classroom context and the written comment; and, more significantly as it turned out, of the oral comment as instructive feedback to the learner. Oral comments, therefore, are the subject of the second part. In the third section, the main questions arising from the oral comment data are examined. This meant in fact consideration of some teachers' images of the aspect of their teaching which most features the oral comment. In summary, the three parts of the study are: 1) an investigation of written comments; 2) an investigation of oral comments; 3) a report of teachers' accounts of one major aspect of their teaching.