Correcting Students’ Written Texts in Different Subjects: Insights from a Teacher Survey

Lara Godec Soršak in Alenka Rot Vrhovec

Summary:  The main objective of the PROP project (Empirical foundations for digitally-supported development of writing skills) was to support teachers in the correction of students’ written texts by developing a digital tool for correcting linguistic errors. The project included a survey of primary and secondary school teachers on how they correct their students’ written texts. In this paper, we present only part of the large-scale survey, i.e. the results related to the two research questions of how teachers correct students’ written texts, how they give feedback to them and whether this is related to the subject they teach (teachers of Slovenian, primary school teachers, and teachers of other subjects). The results of the survey showed that teachers revise students’ written texts and spend more than 10 hours per month doing so, and that there is a statistically significant correlation between revising texts and giving feedback and the subject they teach, with Slovene teachers and then primary school teachers more likely to do so than teachers of other subjects. The findings provide insights into teachers’ habits of correcting students’ written texts and confirm the need to design a digital tool for correcting linguistic errors in Slovene.