The Influence Of Anonymous Peer Feedback And Real-Name Peer Feedback On Non-English Majors Of Different Writing Proficiency

In recent years, researchers from both home and abroad are paying more andmore attention to peer feedback applied in second language writing. SL students canbenefit from peer feedback both as feedback givers and receivers to some degree.However, few studies have been done on how to provide effective peer feedback forChinese students without being affected by face-saving.Based on the previous studies on peer feedback from home and abroad, the mainpurpose of the current study is to explore which peer feedback form—anonymous orreal-name—is more effective for non-English majors in China. By forming anexperiment of two forms of feedback among non-English majors, and by conductinga questionnaire survey, an interview, a pre-test and a post-test, the author has thefollowing findings:(1) As feedback receivers, higher and intermediate level participants prefer toreceive comments with feedback giver’s name for they believe that this can ensurethat the feedback giver is more responsible. On the contrary, lower proficiencyparticipants are more willing to receive anonymous feedback. They believe thatanonymous feedback is proper and valuable because their peer can point out theproblems directly ignoring face.(2) The form of peer feedback, anonymous or real-name, will influence the waysand content of feedback. Anonymous feedback is more direct and detailed, whilereal-name feedback is more implicit and general.(3) For most of the higher level writing proficiency students, they wouldconsider whether the comments are helpful for revising; no matter whether it isanonymous or real-name feedback. The majority of the intermediate level studentsare more willing to adopt the real-name feedback. Most of the lower levelparticipants would not doubt about the correctness of feedback and revise theircompositions according to it.(4) The increased score of each peer feedback group doesn’t reach high enough score to support significant improvement from statistical angle. But each group hasmade some progress compared with their pre-test scores, I-RF and L-AF group inparticular.The author suggests that teachers should adopt the group mode of“i+1”andorganize real-name peer feedback for higher and intermediate level students andanonymous feedback for lower proficiency students. In that case, peer feedback canserve EFL writers more effectively and students will show more interest in ESLwriting and improve their ESL writing proficiency.