A study investigated the responses of students of English as a Second Language (ESL) to teachers' written comments on essay drafts. Subjects were 15 students in intensive college ESL courses. The students wrote essay drafts, which were turned in to teachers for graded comments. The students were then interviewed within three days after receiving the graded final papers. Open-ended interviews focused on the changes students made in successive versions of their essays. Questions elicited an explanation of why each change was made, and how the student decided to make each change. Teacher comments (which could consist of implicit comments, explicit comments, direct corrections, or pointing out an error by underlining, etc). The focus of the comments (content, organization, lexicon, syntax, orthography, punctuation) and student changes (addition, deletion, rearrangement, substitution) were tabulated and analyzed. Results yielded three main conclusions: (1) students did read and use teachers' comments to edit and expand compositions, but did not always understand the need for revision or substantially improve the compositions; (2) teacher comments did not do a good job of intervening in the writing process; and (3) comments often appropriated meaning and the students tolerated the appropriation. (MSE)