A Study Of The Effect Of Peer Editing On Student Writing

As many teachers of English in China have noted, acquiring the writing skill seems to be more laborious and demanding than acquiring the other three skills. At present the teaching of writing is still a weak area in the second language teaching. The improvement of the teaching of writing has been of great interests to researchers and teachers in China.Designed to explore the effect of peer editing on EFL writing and the student's attitude toward cooperation in the writing process, the experimental research which focuses peer editing has answered the research questions positively. Students can improve their writing skills so that they will achieve higher scores in writing exams after peer editing is incorporated in the writing instruction. Students can enhance cooperative learning in the writing process after the peer editing activities in class. This is greatly due to the following interpretations. Peer editing, being a form of cooperative learning, greatly enhances students'writing efficiency. On the other hand, the successful learning experience makes students give more value on cooperative learning in the writing process. Peer editing, as a key component of process writing, helps students understand better the writing process, thus get more involved in the process and become better at writing.Peer editing is an instructional strategy that uses cooperative feedback on a student writing from other students to assist the writer in creating a fuller, richer, more organized and complete writing. By doing editing cooperatively, students learn to do good editing themselves, understand better the writing process and improve writing efficiency. Given the right conditions, writing can become a rewarding activity that fosters students'language competence. Everyone has the capacity to write, writing can be taught, and teachers can help students become better writers with the help of peer editing.