A Tentative Study Of The Effectiveness Of Peer Feedback In The Teaching Of Writing To English Majors In China

For three decades or so in the field of teaching writing, the process approach has grown to be as prevalent as the already dominant product approach. More and more writing teachers have been trying this widely advocated approach, shifting their focus from the end product of writing to the process of writing. However, the new way of teaching writing does not always produce desired results. The link of peer feedback in the process approach is a very controversial one, especially when it is tried on ESL or EFL learners.The present study attempts to test the effectiveness of peer feedback in natural Chinese classrooms by comparing the performances of two groups of learners during a training course and investigating English majors' and writing teachers' opinions through questionnaires and interviews. This paper also intends to gain an insight into the significance of the approach in writing pedagogical practice. Data were collected through the author's classroom observations, scores on the subjects' compositions, questionnaire sheets to over 100 English majors and 11 college teachers teaching writing in English, and interviews with some subjects. The analysis of the data does not illustrate a positive picture of peer feedback, which suggests that writing teachers in China cannot apply the technique originated from L1 teaching setting without any modification, or even suggests that they can try other techniques to help learners ameliorate writing ability substantially.The paper consists of seven sections. The introduction part reveals the problems writing instructors in China encounter and briefs the structure of the body of the paper. Chapter One presents the literature review. In this chapter, nature of writing, essence of the process approach, and interactionism are discussed serving the theoretical framework which makes peer feedback feasible, while the conflicting views among researchers and teachers are presented to necessitate the present study. Chapter Two describes the research design and the sources of data. The results of the data analysisare presented in Chapter Three. And the discussion about the study results is covered by Chapter Four. Chapter Five puts forward teaching implications drawn from this study, and gives recommendations for future research. The conclusion part makes a summary of the whole study.