A Study Of Chinese College Students’ English Writing:Interaction In Peer Review Activities

In the context of globalization and China’s reinforced communication with theworld, English writing increasingly plays an important role. International exchange ofinformation and technology is inevitably realized through the mode of written English.Accordingly, the training of English writing ability has been emphasized in Chineseforeign language teaching agenda. Yet, English writing teaching, for a long time inChina, has been unsatisfactory and many students have the problem writing a decentessay. The situation, thus, calls for in-depth investigations covering different foci ofEnglish writing research. The present study draws upon the sociocultural perspectivesto investigate Chinese college students’ interaction in peer review activities. It isexpected to broaden our understanding towards the process of peer review and makeimplications for the implementation of effective peer review activities in Englishwriting classes.Peer review is the activity that students are arranged in groups to provideinformation to the writer for revision. It is by nature a socially shared process inwhich the reader and the writer negotiate and co-construct texts. In recent severaldecades, studies on Second Language Acquisition turn to the lens of socioculturalperspectives, which has provided theoretical supports to the studies on peer review.The Sociocultural Theory is proposed by the famous Russian psychologist, Vygotsky,who argues that humans’ higher mental functions are developed through socialinteraction and what is central to all learning is social interaction. Another seminalsociocultural construct is “scaffolding”, a metaphorical concept developed byVygotskyan followers on the basis of Vygostsky’s theory of Zone of ProximalDevelopment (ZPD, the distance in performance between what a child can achievewith the help of an expert and what they can achieve alone). It refers to the interactivesupport from other social members to help learners carry out tasks. When the learner shows the sign of being able to manage the task, they gradually pull back the scaffold,like the temporary raised platform in building. Based on sociocultural constructs, peerreview groups, therefore, are assumed helpful and beneficial because when studentsare involved in peer review, interaction takes place, which promotes learning.Studies pertaining to peer review overseas and in China have been carried out toinvestigate1) students’ attitude towards peer review;2) the effectiveness of peerreview; and3) differences between peer review and other means of responding tostudents’ writing. Although research regarding peer review enjoys popularity for along time, most studies have been conducted in learning English as a second language(ESL) context and fewer have been launched in Chinese tertiary settings teachingEnglish as a foreign language (EFL). Besides, despite the fact that socioculturalconstructs are agreed by most scholars as the theoretical support underpinning peerreview, it is hard to find studies that probe into the interactive process of students’peer review in China. The present study, thus, investigates Chinese college students’interaction in peer review activities from the perspectives of Sociocultural Theory. Itis carried out to explore the following three questions:1. What are the scaffolding functions of the students’ interactive feedback?2. What are the features of the students’ interactive feedback?3. How do the students’ respond to their interactions in peer review activities?The method adopted in the present research is case study. The participants arefour students from a writing program in a national university in Northeast China. Inthe ten-week long program, the students have finished at least two drafts of fivedifferent types of text taught in the class. Each week in the class, the instructordesigned a section of peer review. As the researcher observed, the four students wererelatively active in giving their peers comments. And they all gave consent inparticipating in the present study. Instruments employed are the writing drafts thestudents have finished, the checklist distributed in the class and individual interviews.In the week after the writing program ended, the four students were arranged intwo dyads as their original pairs in the class and each dyad conducted two sessions ofpeer review. In the first session, they focused on one essay from any of the two members and in the second session, they revised the other essay. The four sessions ofpeer review were tape-recorded. After the students had finished each session of peerreview, individual interviews were conducted with them, covering their evaluation ofpeer interaction, belief in their peers’ competence of revising their writing, andcomparative experience between peer review in the class and in the present study.Findings based on the analysis of the tape-recorded peer review are as follows.First, during interactions, the students are able to verbally provide scaffolding totheir peers and there are eleven functions of scaffolding: affective involvement,demonstration, direction maintenance, frustration control, intentionality, joint regard,marking critical features, praise/encouragement, psychological differentiation,sharing of experience and task regulation. Among the eleven categories, the threemost frequent categories are direction maintenance, demonstration and markingcritical features.Direction maintenance refers to students’ directing their peers on finishing thetask of revision. This function to a larger extent is realized by the checklist: thestudents either reading the criteria or citing the key words on the checklist to directtheir peers on the revision of the text. The checklist also provides potential learningopportunities for the students. Demonstration refers to students’ demonstratingknowledge or modeling solutions to a problem in their peers’ writing. There aremainly two purposes of demonstration, to construct knowledge or to complete therevision task. Marking critical features refers to students’ pointing out thediscrepancies between what their peers have generated and the correct production.The students often can make interpretations of these discrepancies and use imperativetones to force revision out of their peers.Secondly, the students’ interactive feedback has three main features:1)negotiation on macro level of the text;2) negotiation on micro level of the text;3) andgeneration of wrong production. Otherwise put, the students have helped their peerson the revision of both macro (eg. organization, structure) and micro (eg. grammar,vocabulary) issues of the text. However, the students may have producedinappropriate forms or rules although their original intention is to offer help. Findings based on the interviews are as follows. First, the four students all agreethat peer interaction is helpful and beneficial: they have developed a sense of readerand have opportunities to learn from their peers’ writing and test their own knowledgeabout English writing. Secondly, the students hold conflicting attitudes towards theirtrust in their peers: on one hand, they believe their peers can help revise both macroand macro issues of text; on the other hand, they feel it is easier to accept revisionadvice on macro issues, for example, organization, than advice on micro issues.Finally, the students note that it is understandable that the teacher in the class haveasked them to respond independently first by giving written comments due to timelimitation. Yet, they believe intensive discussion about writing can take place wheninteracting with peers and hope the writing teacher could reinforce peer-to-peerinteraction in peer review activities.The present study also reveals the impact of systematic writing instructions onstudents’ performance in peer review activities. It is recommended that writingteachers carefully design their class content and make it consistent with the design ofpeer review. As for the implementation of peer review, writing teachers may considerallocating one or two separate periods of class to engage students in interaction torevise their peers’ writing. At the same time, writing teachers should keep a closecontact with each group and be ready to offer help once students are incapable ofcompleting the task with their peers.The present study is tentatively undertaken to explore Chinese college students’interaction in peer review activities and there exists certain limitations. It is expectedthat implications can be made for both the implementation of peer review in writingclasses and future studies.