An Empirical Study On The Efficacy Of Peer Feedback On Chinese Non-English Majors’ EFL Writing

In peer feedback activity, students assume duel roles:they provide feedback to peers and they receive peer feedback in turn. We see the quality of feedback students provide for peers, the efficiency of students’ incorporation of valid feedback and their attitudes to peer feedback all affect its efficacy on writing.Yet abundant studies have centered on the effectiveness issue, few of them have focused on the detailed analysis of the quality of feedback students provide for peers. In response to this insufficiency, the present study designs to investigate the effectiveness of peer feedback by carefully examining the quality of feedback the students provide for peers. Based on the frameworks of Peer Feedback, Process Writing Theory and Zone of Proximal Development Theory, the present study will address the following questions:1). What is the quality of feedback the students provide for their peers after the experiment?2). How do they incorporate peer feedback after the experiment and what are its effects on writing quality?3). What are their attitudes towards peer feedback?To answer the questions, quantitative and qualitative analysis were employed to examine data obtained from the one-semester empirical study on52non-English majors in South China University of Technology. First, by comparing the students’ provision of global feedback, local feedback, and valid feedback in the first and the last writing task, examining language features of feedback provided in the last writing task, and interpreting interview results, it was concluded that the students could give quality feedback to a great extent after the experiment. Second, through paired t-tests between incorporation ratios of valid feedback, mean scores of drafts in the first and the last writing task and interpreting interview results, it was found that the students’ incorporation of feedback and its efficacy on writing have improved after the experiment. At last, results of the questionnaires and the semi-structured interviews indicated the students were more positive to peer feedback after the experiment.To sum up, peer feedback has positive effects on Chinese non-English majors’ EFL writing and it provides guidance for teaching and learning of college English writing.