The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of determining the influence of instructors' written comments on the test performances of students in selected college subjects. The students were from one university and one junior college. The written comments were designed to be positive in nature and to encourage better future test performances by students. The comments were made in regard to the letter grades received by the students and were placed only on major (as defined by each instructor) objective tests.

I den här undersökningen har lärarkommentarer i studentuppsatser under hundra år undersökts med syfte att ta reda på vad dessa kan säga om språkliga normer och deras utveckling vid Karlstads högre allmänna läroverk mellan åren 1868 och 1968.  Undersökningen har begränsats till tre nedslag med femtio års mellanrum, 1868, 1918 och 1968, där lärarnas kommentarer kategoriserats efter funktion. Kategorierna har också analyserats separat med hjälp av utvalda exempel från respektive kategori. Slutligen har resultatet jämförts med tidigare forskning om elevspråk i studentuppsatser.  Resultatet visar dels på att elevernas skriftliga språknorm framför allt under 1900-talets senare hälft blivit enklare och mer talspråklig, och att lärare alltid i viss mån har velat motverka eller bromsa den utvecklingen, men dels också på lärarens språkmakt och tolkningsföreträde i att bedöma vad som är rätt och fel. Det visar också att lärarnas språkvårdande funktion varit stark under hela undersökningsperioden. / In this study, teacher comments in student essays have been examined with the aim of finding out what these can say about linguistic norms and their development at Karlstad's secondary upper school between 1868 and 1968. The study is limited to years at fifty-year intervals, 1868, 1918 and 1968, in which the teachers' comments were categorized by function. The categories have also been analyzed separately using examples from each category. Finally, the result has been compared with previous research on student language in student essays. The result shows that the norm of students' written language, especially during the latter half of the 20th century, is less complex and closer to colloquial language, and that teachers to some degree always have wanted to slow down this development. However it also shows the teacher's language power in assessing what is right and wrong. Furthermore, the study shows that the teachers' language cultivational function has remained strong throughout the investigation period.

I den här undersökningen har lärarkommentarer i studentuppsatser under hundra år undersökts med syfte att ta reda på vad dessa kan säga om språkliga normer och deras utveckling vid Karlstads högre allmänna läroverk mellan åren 1868 och 1968.  Undersökningen har begränsats till tre nedslag med femtio års mellanrum, 1868, 1918 och 1968, där lärarnas kommentarer kategoriserats efter funktion. Kategorierna har också analyserats separat med hjälp av utvalda exempel från respektive kategori. Slutligen har resultatet jämförts med tidigare forskning om elevspråk i studentuppsatser.  Resultatet visar dels på att elevernas skriftliga språknorm framför allt under 1900-talets senare hälft blivit enklare och mer talspråklig, och att lärare alltid i viss mån har velat motverka eller bromsa den utvecklingen, men dels också på lärarens språkmakt och tolkningsföreträde i att bedöma vad som är rätt och fel. Det visar också att lärarnas språkvårdande funktion varit stark under hela undersökningsperioden. / In this study, teacher comments in student essays have been examined with the aim of finding out what these can say about linguistic norms and their development at Karlstad's secondary upper school between 1868 and 1968. The study is limited to years at fifty-year intervals, 1868, 1918 and 1968, in which the teachers' comments were categorized by function. The categories have also been analyzed separately using examples from each category. Finally, the result has been compared with previous research on student language in student essays. The result shows that the norm of students' written language, especially during the latter half of the 20th century, is less complex and closer to colloquial language, and that teachers to some degree always have wanted to slow down this development. However it also shows the teacher's language power in assessing what is right and wrong. Furthermore, the study shows that the teachers' language cultivational function has remained strong throughout the investigation period.

This study investigates the impact of instructors' positive comments on academic resiliency and student performance. Not only is academic resiliency a stable trait, but we hypothesis that it may be induced or impeded; i.e. academic resiliency is malleable. The Academic Self-Efficacy Scale, Academic Locus of Control Scale, and the Academic Conscientiousness Scale were collected as covariates. It was predicted that participants randomly assigned to the positive teacher support condition would score better on the final exam and demonstrate increased academic resiliency compared to a baseline measure. Conversely, participants randomly assigned to the negative teacher support condition should do poorly on the exam and demonstrate reduced academic resiliency compared to a baseline measure. There were of73 undergraduate participants (13 male, 60 female) with a median age of 22 (SD=7 .19) recruited from a large Southeastern university students who were enrolled in two web-based courses.

This dissertation considers the language socialization of law students. One message that the law students encounter is that legal Swedish is an entirely new language. The main aim is to investigate what linguistic norms are conveyed to the students through the teachers’ comments on the students’ texts and through various forms of writing instructions. The material consists of student texts with teacher comments and documentation on various phases of instruction with a focus on writing. Teacher comments on texts written during the first year of the law programme are analyzed and categorized. The analysis stems from two models. The first model is based on different text levels, like formal conventions of writing, sentence construction, text structure, word choice and style, and content. The second model distinguishes different linguistic norms based on three layers: The first layer consists of written language norms in general language practice, the second of academic language norms and the third of norms that are specific to the use of legal language. The results show that word choice and style is the most common category for the teachers’ comments in the first term of the law programme and content is the most common in the second term (with word choice and style the second most common). Formal conventions of writing, sentence structure and different types of grammatical constructions are some of the things the teachers criticize. Surprisingly few of the teachers’ comments concern more overarching aspects such as text structure or the aim and genre of the text. Comments are made on local features in the text, but rarely on more global features. The teaching practice that the writing of law students belongs to entails, among other things, that the students’ texts are assessed anonymously for the sake of fairness. This means that there is not much opportunity for a student to discuss the text with the teacher who commented on and assessed it. The construction of the teachers’ text comments is particularly important when dialogue between student and teacher on the text draft and final version is not an integral part of instruction. The teachers’ written comments are usually brief and do not allow much space for a consideration of linguistic norms and text patterns, which reduces the opportunities for the teachers and the law programme to contribute to a deeper linguistic awareness in the law students.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect that a writing teacher's written comments had on improvement in L2 writing; whether the types of changes students made in their drafts after teacher comments were substantial at the content level and/or language level; to what extent the focus (content- and language-focused) and the directness (direct and indirect) of teacher feedback predicted improvement in L2 writing; and the teacher's and students' attitudes toward and perception of good writing and the role of teacher comments. The study had three major components. First, a quantitative study was conducted to examine the rate of students' successful revisions in response to the teacher written feedback. Using descriptive statistics, it was found that students revised more successfully in response to language-focused comments and direct comments than in response to content-focused comments and indirect comments. The next phase of the study investigated how the focus and directness of teacher comments resulted in and predicted improvement in writing. Using paired sample t-tests, it was found that teacher's comments on student drafts did lead to overall improvement in the grades on the revised essays. Employing hierarchical regressions, it was also found that higher rates of successful revision in response to content-focused comments and direct comments resulted in higher grades in the subsequent revisions. Using a one-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), it was also found that while students' writing improved significantly for new essay assignments in the area of content, there was no statistically significant improvement in students' linguistic accuracy in their writing over the course of the semester. The final part of the study examined the students' perceived need for teacher feedback and revision, and the teacher's view on writing. Using surveys and interviews, it was found that the teacher and students had different opinions about the role and importance of feedback. The students reported that direct corrections of linguistic errors were less beneficial to them, even though the teacher gave much more direct corrective feedback than indirect feedback over the course of the semester. In addition, while the students expected to have received the grades of each writing assignment, the teacher only commented on the drafts and gave out a single overall grade at the end of semester. The study, using quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze multiple sources of data, presented strong empirical evidence that the content-focused comments and direct comments provided by the teacher contributed to higher grades in the subsequent revisions of the same essay assignment, and that there was no effect of teacher comments, especially direct corrections on linguistic features, on longer-term improvement in L2 writing. These results suggest that when giving written feedback, writing teachers should take into account whether students are developmentally ready to learn the lexical and grammatical forms and structures corrected by teachers. The study, designed as longitudinal study in a real world setting, provided a rich description of the effect of a teacher's commenting practice and L2 writers' revision behaviors. / CITE/Language Arts