A Comparative Study On The Influence Of Teacher And Peer Feedback In English Writing In Senior High Schools

Writing, one of essential skills to master English, is also a reflection of thequantity and quality of learners’ output. It is an important part in high-schoolstudents’ English learning. An efficient way to improve the writing skill is to provideappropriate feedback. However, in Chinese traditional writing classes, teachers oftengive simple and mechanical feedbacks and this has produced a negative attitude.Teachers often take essay-correcting as lengthy and time-consuming work. So how togive effective feedbacks to improve students’ writing skills has become a focus formany English teachers.This study aims to answer the following questions with the help of theexperiment and questionnaire:1) What’s the students’ attitudes toward teacherfeedback and peer feedback?2) Has the peer feedback been effectively used, and is ithelpful to improve students’ writing skills?3) What is the difference between the twofeedbacks on students’ English writing?After analyzing a large number of domestic and foreign scholars’ studies and theprocess writing theory, the author conducted an experiment in a high school in Xintai,Shandong Province. The author selected two classes, one accepted the peer feedback,and the other accepted teacher feedback. In the following twelve weeks, two classesfinished the same writing tasks. At the end of the experiment, both of the two classesreceived a post-test.After an analysis of the experimental data by SPSS20.0, the author has made thefollowing conclusions: first, both the teacher feedback and peer feedback can helpimprove students English writing skills. Second, the gap among students’ writing inpeer feedback class is narrowed, and the gap among students’ writing in teacherfeedback class is expanded. Third, students tend to accept the combination of teacherfeedback and peer feedback, and most students show a positive attitude to peerfeedback.Finally, it is concluded that the combination of teacher feedback and peerfeedback would be a great help to teachers’ English writing teaching and to improvingstudents’ writing skills.