An Empirical Study On The Application Of Peer Review In The Continuation Task Under “ Input- Output” Theory

With the promulgation of the New English Curriculum Standard for Senior High Schools,the English educational reform is also in full swing.The continuation task has been identified as a new type of English writing in College Entrance Examination,which integrates input and output,imitation and creation tightly,and is regarded as an effective form to improve students’ comprehensive abilities of language use.However,it is a common phenomenon that students nowadays are afraid of writing and usually have no ideas about what to write.One of possible reasons is that the traditional teaching and evaluation method overemphasizes the dominant roles of teachers,thus students’ subjectivity and their interest in writing are weakened to some extent.As a new evaluation method,peer review strengthens the interaction between teachers and students,so that every student can participate actively in the process of evaluation.Encouraging students to actively exchange ideas is conducive to broadening their perspectives,enhancing their understanding of reading materials and improving their interest in writing.In evaluation process,they have gradually learned to find and solve problems timely,which will further help them to improve their writing abilities.Based on the Input Hypothesis Theory and Output Hypothesis Theory,the thesis mainly aims to explore the role of peer review in the continuation task.Two classes of Grade 1 in Dalian Changxing Island Senior High School were selected as the research subjects,of which Class 5 was the experimental class and Class 4 was the control class.In the experimental class,students were divided into several groups and peer review was carried out after students having finished their first drafts.In the control class,traditional evaluation method was still used,that is learners would modify their own compositions according to the model essay after teachers’ brief analysis and summary.Data were collected through pre-test,post-test,questionnaires and interview,and SPSS 19.0 was used to analyze the data.Based on the results,it can be seen obviously that the application of peer review can effectively improve students’ interest in the continuation task,enhance their understanding of the reading materials,and finally improve their writing performances to a certain extent.Although the experimental results are within expectation,there are still many problems remaining to be solved.The writer will continue to improve in future teaching practice,thus enrich Foreign Language Teaching Theory and Practice.