The impact of teachers' comment types on students' revision

This paper investigates a particular aspect of teacher commentary on EFL students' writing and examines the influence on their revisions. Three types of handwritten commentary were used between drafts: statements, imperatives, and questions. The resulting 115 changes were analyzed based on the degree to which the students utilized each teacher's commentary in the revision. The results show that the comments in the imperative form were more influential on revisions than questions or statements and appeared to help students to make substantial, effective revisions. This outcome may imply that teachers should be careful in selecting comment types when writing between-draft comments.