Feedback on Writing

Abstract

The article first calls attention to research on learner strategies and to the significant role that verbal report data have played in such research. While various research methods have been used to describe such strategies, verbal report measures are being used more and more as a means for describing cognitive processes in such areas as communicating, translating, test taking, and language learning. The article focuses just on the use of verbal report in describing learner strategies in language learning and language using. It is noted that information on learner strategies has evolved from partially intuited lists of strategies to empirically derived taxonomies that have as their ultimate purpose that of training learners to be more successful at language learning. Second, the controversy regarding the use of verbal report measures is discussed. Finally, the article describes a study that employed a variety of verbal report measures in an effort to understand better the strategies that teachers use in giving feedback on compositions and the strategies that learners use in handling this feedback in the English-foreign-languge and Portuguese-native-language classrooms, respectively.