A friend, Barb, sent me an article from our alma mater, the University of Minnesota. From the German department, specifically, where I taught for a year during the long haul to a doctorate degree in curriculum and instruction. It’s called “Effects of the Red Pen.”
The research is from 1984. Harriet Semke orchestrated four types of feedback for first-year German students. In response to their journal writing, teachers
- wrote comments and questions only,
- corrected mistakes only,
- wrote comments and questions and corrected mistakes, or
- used a schema to code mistakes.
She found that only the first type of response was effective:
“Results of this study indicate that student progress is enhanced by writing practice alone. Corrections do not increase writing accuracy, writing fluency, or general language fluency, and they may have a negative effect on student attitudes … “
As a former German student and German teacher, reading Semke’s report unleashed a flood of memories. As an undergraduate, my own hesitant German writing was given back to me filled with corrections, and during the 1990s at the University of Minnesota German department, all of us Teaching Assistants were trained to use the fourth response type that Harriet researched. (Perhaps they hadn’t read their colleague’s piece, or maybe they had counter evidence?) I also remember as a young teacher in a summer language immersion program that we responded to student journals with comments and questions only, unless a student asked for feedback, and then we only responded to one or two specific grammatical issues the student requested. Barb remembers doing the same. Perhaps whoever trained us had read Semke’s piece.
No doubt the relation between feedback types, learning, and complex factors like attitude and motivation do not allow a simple blanket statement of “don’t ever make corrections!” Semke is not asserting that and some recent research takes a pretty nuanced look; see for example the resources at the end of the article if you are interested.
My own interest in Semke’s article didn’t stop at responding to student writing in a world language class. My thoughts jumped first to responding to graduate students via rubrics (which I’ve dealt with as an adjunct professor across several institutions) and then to adult learning in general, specifically in the area I have been most interested in for the past two decades: professional development for current teachers.
Is there a red pen effect in professional learning?
My short (and folksy) answer is: “Yer darn tootin’ there is!” I think it boils down to one very human factor about feedback – we resist it.
Those first-year German students that Semke studied were confronted with a barrage of corrections. The numerous ways to express the word “the,” the endings required on every adjective, spelling, word order … ach meine Güte there are lots of ways to trip over a German sentence. The feedback gets to be too much and too broad and we start blocking it out. Once we start blocking it out there isn’t much worth in having it there. Just the opposite, in fact. The only thing we’ve gained is a negative attitude toward what we are learning, which will predictably impact motivation, sometimes to the point of dropping language study entirely. Without motivation we aren’t thinking too hard about any of those corrections anyway. There we were trying to express our thoughts and in return we were shown how poorly we do that!
I’m pretty sure, anecdotally yes but pretty sure, that using a rubric while giving feedback to students changes the feedback that I can give – at least the feedback that I can give that the student is ready to hear and really take in. If the feedback comes with a lower grade than the student wants (which so often means anything but the top grade), there is resistance. However, if the student gets the top grade and then the comments suggest ways to go above and beyond, well, sure, why not! But then why have the grade in the first place? Why not just the comments, the conversation? I don’t have the research here, maybe you will want to look for it. I do have a strong feeling that this dynamic is in play.
And then in regards to professional learning: the red pen effect. The resistance. I’m pretty sure it is there and that it is significant.
The usual approach to professional learning is to invite teachers (or require teachers) to attend a session by an expert who will share something that is a change to the current teacher practice. That something may be effective (or, of course, it may not be). I’m thinking, as my memory smells those hallways in Folwell Hall at the University of Minnesota where Semke did her research, that teachers perceive, to some degree, that the suggestions in a professional development session are like the red pen in the margins of their practice, like lines stricken through approaches to teaching that they have used for a long time. It doesn’t matter so much if the professional development they are sharing is effective or ineffective, the approach itself is in effect yielding a red pen, the expert’s red pen, much like a world language teacher marking an essay.
And just like Semke found that the first-year German students responded more favorably to comments only (which may well have the effect of encouraging more writing, so getting more practice), I’m betting that teachers are going to reflect more usefully on their teaching practices if it isn’t the outside expert or experts yielding red pens, however valid their suggestions might be, but rather a colleague or colleagues who are giving them “comments only.” After all, it doesn’t help to be right if the reaction is resistance and blocking. Instead of getting the change you were looking for you just might find that teachers dig in their heels and double down on what they are already doing.
We as teachers need, I think, a whole lot of space and time and conversation and reflection before getting to the point where we ask for feedback ourselves. We need to be able to have the conversation about what we are doing without the threat of the red pen. And then, when we are ready, like those students in the summer program who started asking for specific corrections in their journals, we will be able to hear the feedback. Plus we will have learned to identify for ourselves what might be the next right thing for our own improvement.
So, thanks to Barb for sending the article, thanks to all the experiences along the way that form my opinions today, and thank goodness it is possible to let teachers create the professional learning experiences they think best for them, so that we can have good conversations on their terms, when they are ready, about what they are working on.
Comments only. Put down the red pen whenever you can.
References and resources
Semke, H. (1984). Effects of the Red Pen, Foreign Language Annals, Vol. 17(3), 195-202, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1984.tb01727.x
For a more nuanced understanding
Guskey, T. (2019). Grades versus comments: Research on student feedback, Phi Beta Kappan, 101(3), 42-47, DOI:10.1177/0031721719885920
Panadero, E., & Sánchez-Iglesias, I. (2025). Impact of Displaying Grades Vs. Not Displaying Grades on Academic Performance and Emotional Outcomes While Delivering Feedback Comments: A Longitudinal Study. Educational Assessment, 30(1), 21–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/10627197.2025.2455128
For an example of teacher led professional learning
Sandcastle: https://sites.google.com/las.ch/sandcastle/home