Effects Of Peer Feedback Strategies Training On English Majors’ Writing Quality From The Perspective Of Sociocultural Activity Theory

Peer feedback has proliferated over the past two decades and most previous studies have centered around the effect of peer feedback on English writing,the combination study and comparison study of peer feedback and teacher feedback,student’s attitudes towards peer feedback and peer feedback strategies.However,few studies focus on the training of five peer feedback strategies from sociocultural activity theory perspective(Engestrom,1987).Less attention to the training of five peer feedback strategies results in students’ lack of strategies to interact with peers,revise peers’ compositions and provide correct and specific suggestions for peers’ effective revision,which will have a bad impact on the effects of peer feedback.Although five peer feedback strategies from sociocultural activity theory can improve the effects of peer feedback,no empirical study on the training effects of five peer feedback strategies is conducted.In light of the gap,the study mainly adopts the experimental study method and uses survey method including questionnaires and interview as supplementary method.The research assesses the effects of training in terms of students’ adoption rate and effective revision;students’ writing quality;and students’ attitudes toward writing,peer feedback and peer feedback training.Specifically,the research adopts experimental study method to explore whether training of five peer feedback strategies can improve students’ adoption rate and effective revision and whether training of five peer feedback strategies can improve students’ writing quality,if yes,in what aspects.In addition,the research uses survey method including questionnaires and interview to explore students’ attitudes towards writing,peer feedback and peer feedback training after training of five peer feedback strategies.The research participants are 30 English major juniors at a university in the northwest region of China.The study is carried out in Advanced English Writing Course and lasts 16 weeks.Five Writing Assignments are completed and the first and fifth assignments are collected as data.Firstly,first drafts,peer comments and revised drafts between Writing Assignments 1 and 5 are collected to analyze the difference of adoption rate and rate of effective revision by using Mc Nemar test in SPSS 25.0 version before and after training of peer feedback strategies.Secondly,the research adopted analytic scoring criterion including content,structure,vocabulary,grammar,and mechanics and add up to the total score.Students’ revised drafts are collected,marked and analyzed in Paired-Sample T-test to test the improvement of writing quality that is measured from the total scores between Writing Assignments 1 and 5.Besides,in order to explore in what aspects students can improve their writing quality,scores of each aspect(content,structure,vocabulary,grammar and mechanics)are analyzed in Paired-Sample T-test.The results are presented as follows: 1)training of five peer feedback strategies can improve student’s adoption rate and effective revision;2)training of five peer feedback strategies can improve students’ writing quality,especially in content and structure;3)most of students hold positive attitudes towards writing,peer feedback and peer feedback training after training of five peer feedback strategies.In conclusion,training of five peer feedback strategies can improve student’s adoption rate,effective revision and writing quality.Besides,it can also improve students’ attitudes towards writing,peer feedback and peer feedback training.The research has some pedagogical implications for English writing teaching and learning.First,the research reminds that peer feedback is a socially practical activity which is mediated by artifact,rules,community and labor of division.Teachers should teach students how to use the five strategies from sociocultural activity theory systematically to improve the effects of peer feedback.Secondly,sociocultural activity theory regards peer feedback as a cognitive process.After training of five peer feedback strategies,students have more sufficient strategies to revise peer’s compositions and provide more specific and correct suggestions so that the adoption rate and effective revision are enhanced.Thirdly,the theory considers peer feedback as a social interactive process and it has systematic feature.By using artifacts and sociocultural resources,students interact with each other to revise peer’s composition and help the writer to revise successfully so as to improve writing quality and gradually improve their cognitive,language,writing and social interaction ability.