The Effects Of Online Peer Feedback On Vocational College Learners’ Acquisition Of English Past Perfect Tense

Computer-Mediated-Communication (CMC) has been studied by the experts at and abroad on what effect the peer feedback has on Chinese EFL learners. Along with the development of the information technology, CMC begins to show its superiority. The establishment of various English study websites set off a new upsurge of peer feedback study, while little SCMC experimental study on peer feedback had been done, neither did the study of the students’grammar learning. Most researches were focused on the students’attitude towards the SCMC peer feedback and the FF peer feedback. Based on the former research, this study conducts the online group discussion, aims to clarify the promotion of online synchronous peer feedback on vocational college learners’acquisition of English past perfect tense by specific data.There are five kinds of corrections on the students’written expressions. In this online synchronous feedback study, the author mainly compared the effect of explicit and implicit peer feedback on the acquisition of English past perfect tense in Chinese EFL learners. The study lasted for eight weeks, and the fifteen participants were divided into the explicit group, the implicit group and the control group by the types of peer feedback they received. Before the group distribution, an English proficiency investigation was conducted in order to find the subjects with the similar level of English proficiency. The group members of both explicit group and implicit group have to discuss on two different materials per week during the four sessions treatment. Seven of the materials are a set of4-5pictures with some cues in Chinese, and the last one is a translation material. The materials were designed to elicit the English past perfect tense, and during the discussion, the subjects ought to give peer feedback.The results show that the online synchronous explicit peer feedback could promote the learners acquisition of English past perfect tense significantly, and its immediate posttest scores manifested a significant difference with the implicit group and the control group. While the effect of implicit peer feedback is not that significant because there is no significant difference among its pretest and posttests. A further investigation shows that it is the uptake accuracy that leads to the difference between the explicit group and the implicit group. The explicit group had output more correct uptake so the effect of its acquisition is more significant.