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

As one of the four basic language skills, writing as a language output is extremely important. However, based on the survey of recent years’English Band Four Test (CET-4), students’writing achievement is far from satisfaction. Ever since, an increasing number of researches from different perspectives have been conducted aiming to improve College students’English writing proficiency. Peer feedback as one of the important components of process writing has drawn great attention from researchers. A great number of researches have been conducted to testify the influence of peer feedback in affecting students’proficiency in writing. However, no consensus has been reached.This essay attempts to evaluate the effect of the application of peer feedback in traditional teacher feedback only writing classroom on college students’English writing proficiency. To be more specific, the following questions are to be testified in the research.(1) Are peer feedback activities effective in improving College non-English majors writing proficiency?(2) Compared with the traditional writing instruction of teacher feedback only, do College non-English majors benefit from the application of peer feedback in writing activities? If so, from what aspects do students benefit?(3) What are the students’attitudes towards the application of peer feedback in EFL writing instruction?(4) What are students’suggestions and advice towards peer feedback and teacher feedback? How to facilitate the practice of the application of peer feedback activities?Base on the review of previous theoretical and empirical studies, the thesis designs an experimental study on the application of peer feedback. There are in total80students from two normal classes in their third year learning in Zhixing College of Hubei University. They are randomly assigned to experimental group (EG) and control group (CG). The experiment lasts16weeks, including a pre-test week, a two-week training session, a twelve-week experiment and a post-test week. During the experimental session, there are three writing circles. Both the control group and the experimental group are asked to complete a three-draft composition in each cycle. The CG follows teacher feedback only, while the EG takes both teacher feedback and peer feedback. To identify the effect of the experiment, several instruments are adopted, which are two writing tests, a questionnaire survey, and an interview. Before the experiment, an independent sample t-test was taken to get rid of some possible interference. The sig. value is above0.05which indicates that there was no significant difference between the two classes. Then the essay conducts a series of statistical analysis on comparisons between pre-test and post-test scores of CG and EG respectively, comparison between CG and EG, and a descriptive analysis on questionnaire survey. Besides, it also took a textual analysis on the first and the third writing tasks. At the end of the experiment, an interview was taken in EG to complement the survey.After comprehensive analyses of the data and texts, both classes have some improvement of writing proficieny, and the discrepancy among students inside each class has been narrowed down, however the improvement of CG is not as that significant as that EG. It suggests that peer feedback has played an important role in facilitating college students’ writing proficiency. And it can reduce the discrepancy between the students. It can help students generate ideas, modify the organization and improve language use. Furthermore, peer feedback is helpful in increasing learners’ reader awareness and in arousing students’interest in writing. It is believable that teacher feedback may benefit significantly for immediate result, but in the long run peer feedback can contribute more to the learner’s learning confidence and reader awareness. Therefore, owing to its effectiveness in the improvement of writing proficiency, peer feedback if properly applied and guided can be applied into English writing class. In sum, it suggests that both of the two kinds of feedback serve necessary and complementary functions in promoting students’writing proficiency. They should complement each other rather than exclude each other.