Assuming you mean textarea tag and you've got the attributes correctly named and set (I'm referring to rows, cols)...
Assign a class or ID and set the size via CSS, i.e.
HTML:
<textarea id="custom_textarea" rows="5" cols="120"></textarea>
CSS:
textarea#custom_textarea { height: 850px }
Or maybe there is a global selector set in your CSS somewhere named the same as the HTML tag (textarea) which changes the style.
Next time please include a link to the page so we can see it, if possible. We can examine the source including any CSS and help you better. The link in your sig is broken when I tried it.
-jim