Instructor's Signals to Their Students.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether interrelationships exist among the assignments an instructor plans to give (topic, format, and mode), the intended use of instructional time, and rank order of typical comments used in annotating student papers. The study involved the use of a short questionnaire which contained three parts: (1) questions relating to the teacher's intended assignments (according to mode, aim, and relative frequency); (2) the teacher's planned use of instructional time during the term, rated according to amount of time on certain standard topics; and (3) the teacher's rank ordering of importance of sixteen foci of annotation. A summary of the statistical analysis derived from the questionnaire is given. The conclusion drawn is that teachers frequently send students differing signals of what is important in writing by means of their responses to student papers. The questionnaire used to obtain this information is included. (LL)