An Empirical Study Of The Effectiveness Of Peer Feedback On College English Writing

As process approach to writing has become increasingly popular, feedback, an indispensable part of this approach, has drawn more and more attention from both teachers and researchers. Many studies have been conducted to show the influences of peer feedback on students'writing proficiency. However, some of the findings are conflicting; neither are sufficient for the application of teaching writing in China. Since writing is considered as a difficult process, peer feedback, the indispensable part of process writing, is undoubtedly a hopeful way-out to both learners and teachers.Generally speaking, process writing approach consists of different stages, such as brainstorming activities, outlining, drafting (focusing on meaning), revising (focusing on grammar and meaning), and editing (focusing on style and grammar). It is nonlinear and recursive, which is consistent with modern theories of language learning and acquisition, such as collaborative learning theory and Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. In other words, peer feedback is helpful to stimulate students to take their peers as a kind of learning resource. They may cooperate with each other, negotiate with each other, learn from each other, and revise their writings time and again. Actually, research shows that peer feedback has not only positive effects on students'writing, but also negative ones. For example, to maintain group harmony, peers may not be objective on commenting each other's writings; on the other hand, peers may be skeptical about each other's ability on writing correction.This study is designed to evaluate the effect of peer feedback on college English writing. Accordingly, the author attempts to develop the students'skills in peer feedback by teacher's classroom model performance so as to make the most out of peer feedback. To be exact, the following three questions are to be addressed in the study.1) What are the students'writing performances under the instruction of peer feedback and teacher feedback respectively?2) How does the peer feedback influence college students'writing grades and writing proficiency?3) What are the students'attitudes towards peer feedback and teacher feedback respectively? To testify the effects of peer feedback on college English writing, the researcher, on the basis of the previous research findings, conducted an empirical study by randomly choosing two classes from Changchun Normal University, majoring biology and chemistry respectively. In addition a pretest and a posttest and a questionnaire were also elaborately designed to reinforce the effectiveness of the research. 60 subjects were divided into two groups: the control group(CG) and the experimental group(EG). Each participant was required to write four compositions during the 16-week sessions. The control group adopted the traditional English writing instructions, while the experimental group was trained to practice peer feedback mainly in written forms through two peer review sessions which were conducted in small groups of three students. The author also compared the scores in the final examination in the second semester in order to exclude the possible interferences of the language proficiency on the results of the experiment, and found that there are no significant difference between the two groups. And the comparison on the scores in the pre-test proved the conclusion. After the training, a post-test was held among the 60 participants. At the end of the experiment, a questionnaire was conducted among the experimental group. Finally, 5 students from the experimental group were randomly chosen as the interviewees to talk about their opinions about peer feedback. All the data were analyzed by SPSS19.0.The research findings displayed that peer feedback can be a positive factor in the students'writing performance by raising their cooperative awareness and improving their cooperative skills. And peer feedback also improved students'writing attitude and their scores. At the same time, the research discovered that students welcomed the new writing approach, even though they consider teacher feedback more helpful in increasing their writing proficiency.The positive effectiveness of peer feedback has been testified, it becomes important for us to implement the writing approach properly, so as to help us achieve more, lessen teachers'burden, stimulate students'interest, and improve their overall writing proficiency. In addition, peer feedback can be complementary to teacher feedback and serve writing better.