THE EFFECTS OF STATEMENTS, IMPERATIVES, AND QUESTIONS AS TEACHERʹʹS COMMENTS ON THE REVISION OF COMPOSITION OF IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS

This study determined the effects of three types of comments on the content and organization of Iranian EFL learners’ compositions. They were in the forms of Statement, Imperative, and Question. Totally, 250 changes were traced. The resulting 250 changes were analyzed based on the degree to which the students utilized each teacherʹs comment in the revision process. The results showed that Imperative comments were more influential on revisions than Statements or Questions and they helped students to have more substantial positive revisions. Moreover, it was observed that nearly 60 percent of all the three kind of comments led to positive changes in the final drafts and only 17 percent had negative effects on the revisions. These outcomes may imply that teachers should be more careful in selecting the type of the comments on the studentsʹ revision and try to use more imperative comments than questions or statements when giving comments.