EFFECTS OF DIAGNOSTIC AND PRESCRIPTIVE COMMENTS ON THE REVISING BEHAVIORS OF COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS

This study assessed whether students revise their essays more effectively when given written diagnoses that identify textual flaws and prescriptive comments compared to a group of control students who received the same flawed texts but with directions stating only that there were flaws needing to be corrected. Over a five-week period, both groups revised: 1) a pretest essay 2) three practice essays, and 3)a post-test essay. A seven-category Revision Taxonomy (an analytical rating procedure) was used to score all essays. Both groups' revising skills improved significantly from the time of pretest to post-test on six of the seven revision categories. However,the experimental group improved more than the control group on effective major changes, flaws corrected, and the number of positive changes made to the texts. Being encouraged to revise and given practice revising essays improved the revision skills of students. Furthermore, the Revision Taxonomy developed proved to be effective when scoring and assessi...