What we learned was that college students want praise. The desire for positive responses springs from students beliefs that praise promotes better writing. In contrast, instructors were tentative in assessing the value of their remarks for their students. More than half expressed a belief that making the same comment on papers may help a student recognize a specific problem area. How instructors design comments may contribute to the disparity between instructors perceptions and students needs.
Comments also vary in quantity from one or two per paper to comments as long as the paper itself.
The greatest number of students said they prefer comments that help them improve. The majority also find most useful those comments that tell them what their papers do well, identify grammatical errors, address ideas or content, and caution against less-successful writing strategies. Unwelcome comments from the student's perspective include extensive comments, excessively brief remarks, and symbols. Students isolated this last category to express particular concern, reporting that they find such symbols esoteric because instructors often fail to provide any descrip- tion of them. Also distressing to students are statements directed at changing their writing styles.