An Experimental Study Of The Effects Of Peer-exchange Reading And Evaluation On College English Learners

Peer response has been widely employed in L1, L2 and EFL writing classrooms and has attracted attention of researchers home and abroad. But its validity has yet to be proved. The present study is based on a new writing training model – a di-process-controlled writing training model to study the effects of peer-exchange reading and evaluation on Chinese college students. The thesis is composed of six chapters. The author, in the first place, reviewed the major EFL writing approaches, theories underpinning the use of peer-exchange reading and evaluation, and related studies. A modified version of peer-exchange reading and evaluation was introduced. Then the author put forward three research questions: 1) What are Chinese college students' attitudes toward peer-exchange reading and evaluation, and writing in general? 2) Do Chinese college students have the ability to critique peers' writing and conduct peer-exchange reading and evaluation activities? 3) Does peer-exchange reading and evaluation help improve Chinese college students' overall writing quality? A quasi-experiment was conducted among 61 non-English major college freshmen in Tsinghua University in Beijing. Two classes of the same level were chosen: one served as the experimental class; the other as the control class. The experiment lasted for 10 weeks, during which the two classes received equal training of the di-process-controlled writing training model, and peer-exchange reading and evaluation was emphasized in the experimental class. The data collected included questionnaires, students' self-reflection pieces, peer-exchange reading and evaluation sheets, notes of the teacher's observation, and writing compositions of the pretest and posttest. We conducted quantitative analysis on the data collected by using different analyzing and evaluating devices, including the statistical package SPSS 10.0, VocabProfile (Laufer, B. & Nation, P., 1995), and Experiencing English Writing – Writing Research Database (Yang et al, 2003). In order to provide a complete picture of the research focus, we also made qualitative analysis by means of questionnaire survey, teacher observation and case studies. The results obtained showed that 1) Chinese college students held positive attitudes toward peer-exchange reading and evaluation; 2) they had the ability of giving peer comments and conducting peer-exchange reading and evaluation activities; 3) peer-exchange reading and evaluation helped improve their writing quality. It was especially helpful for students to write longer compositions. We also found that peer-exchange reading and evaluation helped cultivate a serious attitude towards writing and foster students' motivation. Therefore, peer-exchange reading and evaluation can be applied to college English classes as a collaborative and autonomous activity. The present study may shed light on research of similar kinds and serve as reference to college English teachers and students. But due to time limit, the findings are limited and many aspects are ignored. Researches of larger scale on these aspects are expected.