A Study On The Use Of Peer Feedback In EFL Writing By Chinese Tertiary Students

Peer feedback has long been a research focus in the area of foreign language teaching. However, previous research has not developed a profound insight into the use of peer feedback in the Chinese EFL context, and the efforts made to deal with how to integrate different forms of feedback into an optimal way based on the current understanding of peer feedback were insufficient. Therefore, this study attempted to investigate the attitudes and performance of Chinese tertiary students in both giving and receiving peer feedback, and explore the effectiveness of peer feedback on various writing aspects.A total of 71 Chinese tertiary students participated in this study. They were asked to write a topic-given essay, give peer feedback on their peers’ work and revise their own writings in accordance with peer feedback. Adopting both quantitative and qualitative methods, the present study collected data from questionnaire, textual analysis and semi-structure interviews. To analyze the data collected, peer feedback was categorized based on which writing aspect it concerns. Each type of peer feedback was examined to obtain its number and accuracy rate. Meanwhile, revisions made by students were analyzed and corresponding adoption rates were calculated.Results of the study indicate that students had overall positive attitudes toward peer feedback and had more confidence in the benefits of peer feedback for their writings. When giving peer feedback, they tended to offer more negative feedback and provide a large number of comments on grammatical problems. Besides, their comments on mechanical aspects and content were much more accurate than those on vocabulary. When taking feedback from peers, students tended to take more feedback on mechanical aspects and grammar than that on content and organization. As to the effectiveness of peer feedback, comments and suggestions involving grammar and mechanical aspects were taken with high adoption rate and accuracy rate, with comments on vocabulary the least effective. Despite the fact that the feedback on content and structure were mostly accurate, students were cautious to incorporate these suggestions into revisions. Text analysis found score variations in two versions of students’writing and verified the effectiveness of peer feedback to different degrees.Based on its main findings, this study discusses on the use of peer feedback by referring to relevant theories and results of previous studies. It concludes that peer feedback is effective in general for the improvement of students’ writings. By implications, teachers are advised to integrate diverse types of feedback into writing teaching. Students are encouraged to make effective use of peer feedback for better quality of their writings. Limitations of the present study and suggestions for future research are finally presented.