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Table 4 Relationship between content and end form comment characteristics and revision ratings

From: Response to written commentary in preparation for high-stakes second language writing assessment

Category

Value

No change

Minimal change/mixed effect

Substantive change/mixed effect

Minimal change/positive effect

Substantive change/positive effect

n

%

n

%

n

%

n

%

n

%

Focusa

Task response

57

30.3%

37

19.7%

24

12.8%

29

15.4%

41

21.8%

 

Coherence and cohesion

41

44.6%

17

18.5%

5

5.4%

15

16.3%

14

15.2%

 

Lexical resource

39

55.7%

12

17.1%

1

1.4%

18

25.7%

0

0.0%

 

Grammatical range and accuracy

8

16.7%

22

45.8%

3

6.3%

12

25.0%

3

6.3%

Length

Short (1–5 words)

16

76.2%

1

4.8%

0

0.0%

4

19.0%

0

0.0%

 

Average (6–19)

53

47.7%

21

18.9%

4

3.6%

23

20.7%

10

9.0%

 

Long (20–49)

64

33.2%

47

24.4%

18

9.3%

37

19.2%

27

14.0%

 

Very long (50 +)

12

16.4%

19

26.0%

11

15.1%

10

13.7%

21

28.8%

Explicitness

Explicit

28

20.0%

36

25.7%

13

9.3%

31

22.1%

32

22.9%

 

Implicit

24

16.6%

47

32.4%

20

13.8%

32

22.1%

22

15.2%

 

Revisions not required

93

82.3%

5

4.4%

0

0.0%

11

9.7%

4

3.5%

Semantic functionb

Advisory

34

20.9%

45

27.6%

17

10.4%

41

25.2%

26

16.0%

 

Criticism

18

14.2%

39

30.7%

15

11.8%

22

17.3%

33

26.0%

 

Descriptive

30

37.0%

14

17.3%

6

7.4%

21

25.9%

10

12.3%

 

Praise

76

74.5%

6

5.9%

5

4.9%

11

10.8%

4

3.9%

 

Question posing

10

23.8%

7

16.7%

7

16.7%

7

16.7%

11

26.2%

 

Reflective

5

71.4%

0

0.0%

0

0.0%

1

14.3%

1

14.3%

Provision of mitigation strategy

Hedges

29

25.2%

32

27.8%

11

9.6%

20

17.4%

23

20.0%

 

Interrogative syntax

11

27.5%

7

17.5%

9

22.5%

8

20.0%

5

12.5%

 

Paired act/positive softener

7

25.0%

7

25.0%

5

17.9%

6

21.4%

3

10.7%

 

Personal attribution

6

24.0%

1

4.0%

3

12.0%

8

32.0%

7

28.0%

 

None

102

44.0%

48

20.7%

15

6.5%

38

16.4%

29

12.5%

  1. a‘Other’ was omitted since it was not considered possible to measure students’ responses to such comments
  2. bThe imperative was omitted because of its low overall frequency