A Research On The Validity Of Peer Review In The English Writing Class In Senior High School

Writing is a basic language ability for high school students.The National English Curriculum Standards for General High school(2020)has not only repeatedly stressed the significance of writing competence,but also set detailed requirements for high school students in writing.Besides,the English writing part of the National College Entrance Exam in 2021 will change a lot.In addition to raising the score of writing part to 40 and retaining the original English composition writing,there are two new types---continuation writing and summary writing,and one of them will be tested randomly.Therefore,it is urgent to find a method to effectively promote students’ writing competence.As a new evaluation method,peer review has been mentioned many times in the Curriculum Standards,and it has also been used by many researchers in teaching to explore the effect of it,including English writing class.However,the previous studies on peer review mostly focused on college students,and the validity of this new evaluation method is still controversial.Therefore,conducting a research on the validity of peer review on high school students’ writing competence can not only explore whether peer review has a positive impact on English writing teaching and learning,but also provide greater possibilities for students to develop writing competence.Based on cooperative learning theory and process writing approach,the author employed two tests,two questionnaires and two writing exercises to see the students’ changes in their attitudes towards peer review and writing competence before and after the experiment.The writing competence is believed to consist of two parts: one is the writing achievements obtained by students in the test;the other is the accuracy,complexity and fluency of the students’ compositions.The participants of the research were 111 students from two parallel classes of Senior 2 at a senior high school located in Chongqing.In the experiment,all students in the two classes took two tests.Furthermore,the students in EC participated in the questionnaire survey and the peer review training.The research attempts to answer the following three questions:(1)What are students’ attitudes towards peer review before and after it is used in English writing class?(2)Can peer review promote students’ writing achievements? If yes,to what extent can peer review promote students’ writing achievements?(3)How can peer review affect the accuracy,complexity and fluency of students’ writing?There are three research findings that can answer the above questions.Firstly,most students in senior high school have a positive attitude towards peer review even before the peer review training.Moreover,after the experiment,students’ acceptance of peer review has increased based on the survey results of Questionnaire II.However,students still have some doubt about the validity of peer review.Secondly,peer review can help students improve their English writing competence with an obvious effect.What’s more,the students at a medium or a low English level can benefit more from the peer review training than students at a high English level.Thirdly,the author analyzed some factors that might affect the complexity,accuracy and fluency of a composition and found that peer review can promote the complexity the most.Based on the above findings,we can see that peer review can effectively improve students’ writing achievements and promote the complexity of the composition.And the students with a medium or a low English level can make peer review an effective learning aid to promote their English writing.Therefore,English teachers can introduce peer review into writing class at an early stage,and conduct a peer review training,so as to give students more opportunities to develop writing competence.