An Empirical Study Of The Effects Of Peer Feedback In L2 Argumentative Writing Of English Majors

Although peer feedback is supported by several theoretical frameworks, which includes process writing, collaborative learning, Vygotsky’s theory of Zone of Proximal Development, and interaction and second language acquisition, conflicting findings have been reported about its usefulness and effectiveness. In view of this, this empirical study was an attempt to explore the effects of peer feedback on L2 argumentative writing of English majors in China.In particular, it examined the extent to which peer feedback could exert an impact on student’s overall writing quality. In addition, this paper tried to measure the characteristics of peer feedback among Chinese English majors, including the ratio of incorporation and revision types.The participants in this experiment came from college of foreign languages in Hunan University. They are sophomores, majoring in English, and were randomly chosen as the experimental group and the control group. During the treatment period, they were given parallel writing instruction, except that the students in CG received the traditional feedback while the students in EG received peer feedback. The experiment lasted for 15 weeks, during which, each subject wrote two tests (pre-test and post-test), as well as practiced five-writing cycles. All the data obtained from the study were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively by using SPSS 16.0. Through Paired-sample T-test, Independent-sample T-test, Person Correlation and One-way ANOVA, the author gained the following data:1). In pre-test, the two groups were basically at the same level with regard to their writing proficiency. After several feedback sessions, the control group and the experimental group both wrote significantly better in terms of the overall writing quality in post-test. However, there exist no significant differences between the two groups’writing scores in the post-test. In addition to that, through analyzing the changes in the standard deviation, the gap of the students’writing proficiency from the experimental group has been successfully narrowed. For the control group, however, the gap of writing proficiency among the students of the CG has been almost unchanged during the writing session.2). Students in both writing cycles had a high percentage of peer feedback incorporation and the percentage tend to be higher after the students have experienced four peer feedback session. Besides, students tend to pay more attention to the content and organization regarding revision types rather than focusing on the micro-areas, such as grammar and spelling mistakes.Based on the above findings, the thesis provided the empirical evidence for the facilitative role of peer feedback in students’writing as well as students’revision process by examining the Chinese EFL learners. These findings provided insights into the effects of peer feedback on the overall writing quality. In addition, the present study provided some implications for teaching of foreign language writing. This thesis suggests that peer feedback should be properly introduced into the context of Chinese EFL teaching, which should be seen as a complementary source of feedback. Besides, a well-planned implementation process is needed. Peer training should be taken into account when the researcher is to introduce peer feedback into class, which is helpful to overcome some of its limitations and maximize its significant role in writing.