An Empirical Study On Peer Feedback In The Teaching Of Business English Writing In Chinese Higher Vocational College

With the economic globalisation and China's opening up to the outside world, the importance of English writing skill becomes more prominent, compared to that of other English skills such as listening, speaking and reading. As an essential component in writing teaching, feedback has been playing a significant role for both the teacher and the students. Appropriate and effective feedback in writing teaching can not only lessen the teachers' workload and improve the teaching quality, but also stimulate the students'interests in writing. Furthermore, it helps to improve the students'classroom involvement and develop their communicative abilities. However, under the current English teaching model in China, teacher feedback is not only time-consuming and ineffective but also contrary to its expected results in the English writing class.In recent years, the process-oriented approach to English writing teaching has been drawing more and more attention because it challenges the traditional product-oriented approach and regards writing as a recursive rather than a linear process. Peer feedback, based on the theories of the process-oriented approach, Collaborative Learning, Interaction and Second Language Acquisition as well as Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development, has become an important research focus for scholars and language teachers at home and abroad.This study reviews the writing teaching theories of process-oriented approach and product-oriented approach, expounds the results of several important empirical studies on feedback, on peer feedback in particular, and concludes that these achievements are of significant value for reference to improve the Chinese EFL learners'English writing proficiency. Business English belonging to the category of English for Special/Specific Purposes first appeared in the late 1960s. It has about twenty years'developing history in China but the performance of Chinese candidates in Cambridge Business English Certificate, an internationally recognized business qualification, is not satisfying (see Appendixâ… ) and therefore it is of utmost importance to improve the Business English writing proficiency of Chinese EFL learners.This study was conducted in the teaching of second-year Business English majors at Women's College of Shandong. The participants were enrolled in the course of Business English Writing. It attempted to address the following four questions.(1) To what extent do the participants like or dislike peer feedback in the teaching of Business English writing?(2) If they like it, what are the possible reasons? If not, why don't they like it?(3) Is peer feedback effective in improving the participants'English writing proficiency, especially their Business English writing proficiency? In which aspects is it effective?(4) From the participants'points of view, would they like peer feedback to be continued in future writing teaching? In addition to peer feedback, do they have any special need for other kinds of feedback?Based on the data collected, the following findings were made.(1) The majority of the participants held a positive attitude towards peer feedback, although a small number of them were dissatisfied with it in some aspects.(2) The main reason why the participants liked peer feedback was that it was helpful in improving their English writing proficiency as well as their proof-reading abilities. Their reasons for dissatisfaction were that their relations with other group members were occasionally unharmonious in the discussion or some of them doubted that their peers' comments on their writing lacked authority or were subjective.(3) Peer feedback was effective in improving not only the students'proof-reading abilities which is conducive to further improvement in their English writing proficiency but also their Business English writing proficiency especially in the aspects of audience-orientation, organizational awareness, cohesive devices and the like.(4) Most students hoped that peer feedback would be continued in future writing teaching and that teacher feedback would also be applied as a supplement to peer feedback. All in all, peer feedback was proved to be popular with most students in this study. However, its shortcomings revealed can not be neglected. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research were also discussed in the thesis.