A Study Of Effects Of Peer Feedback And Self-assessment In College English Writing From The Perspective Of Constructivism

A bulk of researches on the effects of different forms of feedback on the second language teaching of writing has been conducted, but the results of those researches are quite contradictory. As for the teaching of college English writing in China, facing with the great challenge of huge increasing size of classes, teachers do not have enough time to provide detailed and elaborated comments for students’ compositions, while students also would not like to make revision after teacher feedback so that the quality and the ability of students’English writing are still far from satisfactory.Thereby, with the emphasis of student-oriented and teacher-directed curriculums and students’involvement in the learning of English writing, the thesis sets out to investigate the effects of peer feedback and self-assessment on the college English writing from the perspective of constructivism. Hopefully, it can provide some suggestions for improving the teaching of college English writing by the application of self-assessment and peer feedback in the future.The141students from three classes are non-English majors, who are sophomores taking English modular courses of writing in Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (SWUFE). Besides, the141research subjects from the three classes were randomly divided into two experimental groups (peer feedback group and self-assessment group) and one control group (teacher feedback group) in this study. During the eighteen-week research, besides the two writing tasks in the pre-test and post-test, the other three writing tasks were assigned to all students from the three classes. In addition, the research instruments are two questionnaire surveys, the pre-test and post-test of writing, feedback sheet and interviews and so on. All the data were quantitatively analyzed by SPSS19.0or qualitatively discussed.The results of this study are presented as follows. Firstly, peer feedback and self-assessment can be beneficial in revising students’composition and improving their writing ability. Secondly, students in the peer feedback group (PFG) provided more usable feedback while students in the self-assessment group (SAG) incorporated more self-feedback into their revision of compositions. Thirdly, students held more favorable attitudes toward peer-feedback, though they also confirmed the positive effects of self-assessment. Finally, the training activities of peer feedback and self-assessment were helpful in revising students’compositions.To sum up, the study indicates that peer feedback and self-assessment have positive effects on the English writing and could facilitate the improvement of students’writing ability. Therefore, in the teaching of college English writing, it is feasible and applicable that the traditional teacher feedback should be combined with peer feedback and self-assessment by making full use of peer feedback and self-assessment so as to mutually promote the effects of self-assessment, peer feedback and teacher feedback. Consequently, the complementary application of self-assessment, peer feedback and teacher feedback can more effectively enhance the teaching of college English writing.