"I Really Don't Know What He Meant by That": How Well Do Engineering Students Understand Teachers' Comments on Their Writing?

Abstract

Text-based interviews that compared the teacher's intention for a given comment on an engineering student's paper with the student's understanding of the comment were used to examine the extent to which students understand the comments they receive and to determine the characteristics of comments that are well understood and those that are not. The teachers' comments analyzed in this study were fully understood only about half the time. Inclusion of a reason or explicit instructions helped students understand the comments. © 2011 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.