Effects Of Peer Feedback On EFL Chinese Learners' Noticing In Writing

With the change of focus shifting from"teaching"to"learning"since the 1970s, foreign language classrooms have tended to be more"learner-centered"rather than"teacher-centered". Accordingly in EFL writing peer feedback has since gained ever-growing attention because this type of feedback can achieve the following roles: providing students with an authentic audience; enabling students to receive different views on their writing; helping students learn more about writing through critically reading other pieces of writing; assisting students to use oral language skills(Mittan,1989); in addition, saving teachers'time on certain tasks and freeing them for more helpful instruction.This thesis is based on the'noticing/triggering'function of Output Hypothesis proposed by Swain (1995). It makes a systematic analysis on effects of peer feedback on EFL learners'noticing in writing. The present study investigates the extent to which peer feedback influences EFL learners'noticing at different proficiency levels, the similarities and differences between peer feedback's and teacher feedback's effects on EFL learners'noticing at different proficiency levels and the attitude the learners hold towards peer feedback. 70 EFL Chinese students were involved in this experimental study to discover their performance in noticing of their errors in writing at three different proficiency levels—the high proficiency level, the intermediate proficiency level and the low proficiency level and across two feedback groups-peer feedback group and teacher feedback group.Detailed analyses of the data yield the following major findings. One finding is that there is a significant difference between output 1 and output 2 in the peer feedback group at all the three proficiency levels and that peer feedback has the most noticeable effect on EFL learners'noticing in writing at the intermediate proficiency level , then the high proficiency level, next the low proficiency level. The other finding is that peer feedback and teacher feedback have similar effect on the noticing of the EFL Chinese learners at different proficiency levels in writing. Another finding is that all the subjects agree that peer feedback does help them improve their writing to some extent and peer feedback is favored by most of the EFL Chinese learners in writing (100% at the high and the low proficiency levels, 87.5% at the intermediate proficiency level).These findings have implications for the teaching of English writing in China. They suggest that the practice of peer feedback can be strongly advocated and widely enforced in the context of EFL teaching as a necessary complementary source of feedback in the teaching of EFL writing. Finally the limitations of the present study are discussed and some suggestions for future research are also proposed.