A Study On The Effect Of Peer Feedback In EFL Writing

The importance of writing is commonly recognized. However, in China, where language teaching is characterized with large classes, many college English teachers find marking students'writing is a tedious and unrewarding task. Considering the limited time of teaching college English and a large number of students facing the teacher, in this thesis the author puts forward an alternative way of improving students'writing skills by peer feedback. Three theories are used to support the activity of peer feedback: Constructivism, Vygotskyan Perspectives and Cooperative Learning. The purpose of the research is to investigate the effect of peer feedback on EFL learners'writing development. Three questions are addressed: (1) Does the activity of peer feedback influence Chinese EFL learners'perception of writing? (2) What are students'attitudes toward peer feedback in wring class? (3) Compared with the traditional way of teacher feedback, can peer feedback activity lead to more progress in writing? Two intact classes of freshmen (N=80) are involved in the present research. They are randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions. Experimental group receives guidelines of peer feedback before the study and students'compositions are discussed through peer feedback session, whereas the control group follows the traditional way of teacher responding. Questionnaire I is administered to all students before and after the study. Questionnaire II is only administered to the experimental group after the study. Writing ability, at the beginning and end of the study is measured. The study lasts 16 weeks. Frequency count of students'response to questionnaire shows that more students in the experimental group than those in the control group favors writing and revision. Students view peer feedback as useful and helpful to the improvement of their writing quality. An analysis of pre-and post-tests reveals that students from the experimental group made more progress than those from the control group. The findings of the study demonstrate the positive effect of the use of peer feedback in EFL writing class. Hence, the study is capable of giving some implications on the teaching of college English writing.