Table 2 Characteristics of teacher commentary
From: Response to written commentary in preparation for high-stakes second language writing assessment
Category | Value | Marginal content comments | End comments | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
n | % | n | % | ||
Focus | Task response | 124 | 38.6% | 77 | 25.9% |
| Â | Coherence and cohesion | 34 | 10.6% | 74 | 24.9% |
| Â | Lexical resource | 100 | 31.2% | 69 | 23.2% |
| Â | Grammatical range and accuracy | 63 | 19.6% | 58 | 19.5% |
| Â | Overall | 0 | 0.0% | 19 | 6.4% |
Length | Short (1–5 words) | 61 | 19.0% | 4 | 1.3% |
|  | Average (6–19) | 154 | 48.0% | 85 | 28.6% |
|  | Long (20–49) | 78 | 24.3% | 161 | 54.2% |
|  | Very long (50 +) | 28 | 8.7% | 47 | 15.8% |
Explicitness | Explicit | 196 | 61.1% | 71 | 23.9% |
| Â | Implicit | 84 | 26.2% | 107 | 36.0% |
| Â | Revisions not required | 41 | 12.8% | 119 | 40.1% |
Semantic function | Advisory | 163 | 39.7% | 107 | 30.1% |
| Â | Criticism | 86 | 20.9% | 78 | 22.0% |
| Â | Descriptive | 28 | 6.8% | 79 | 22.3% |
| Â | Imperative | 22 | 5.4% | 0 | 0.0% |
| Â | Praise | 46 | 11.2% | 86 | 24.2% |
| Â | Question posing | 61 | 14.8% | 3 | 0.8% |
| Â | Reflective | 5 | 1.2% | 2 | 0.6% |
Provision of mitigation strategy | Hedges | 87 | 24.3% | 62 | 20.3% |
| Â | Interrogative syntax | 54 | 15.1% | 5 | 1.6% |
| Â | Paired act/positive softener | 25 | 7.0% | 11 | 3.6% |
| Â | Personal attribution | 29 | 8.1% | 12 | 3.9% |
| Â | None | 163 | 45.5% | 215 | 70.5% |