The Effects Of Peer Feedback On College Students’ Oral English Proficiency: From The Perspective Of Activity Theory

Oral proficiency is one of most significant English skills, reflecting learners’ comprehensive ability of English use. Although oral instruction has been gaining muchattention both from academic fields and educational circle, the effects of oral instructionare still not remarkable. Traditional teacher-centered feedback activities, deducinglearners’ enthusiasm and initiative, might be one key explanation for this phenomenon.Therefore, some researchers advocate the application of peer feedback to authentic oralinstruction. The present study, based on Activity Theory, attempts investigate the effectsof peer feedback activities on learners’ oral proficiency. The present study focuses onthe three research questions as follows.(1) Do the learners, who have experienced peer feedback activities, perform better inoral presentation than those who haven’t?(2) Among the aspects constituting the general oral proficiency, such as organization,fluency, accuracy, appropriacy, and interactivity, on which aspect do the learners makeremarkable improvement?(3) Are learners able to provide as effective feedback as the teacher? And, what arethe similarities and differences between peer feedback and teacher feedback?The participants of the present study are from second-year English majors in twonatural classes. The 56 participants, according to their original class, are divided intoexperiment group and control group. Before the experiment, the researcher implementsa pre-test, including a written test and oral test, to ensure no significant differencebetween the two groups on their language and oral proficiency. In addition, before theexperiment, the researcher, along with the teacher, carried out a training session for theexperiment group. The training session includes trainings of peer assessment andcorrection. During the experiment, the experiment group accomplished oral tasksthrough participating in peer feedback activities, while the control group still receivedtraditional teacher feedback.The present study, containing pre-test and post-test, lasts two-months. The researchermakes both qualitative and quantitative analyses by means of SPSS.16.0, and obtainsthe following conclusions.(1) Students in EG, who have experienced peer feedback activities, perform betterthan those in CG who have not.(2) Students in EG make remarkable improvement on accuracy and interactivity oforal language.(3) Students are able to provide effective feedback as the teacher, and there are slightdifferences between peer feedback and teacher feedback on organization andappropriacy of language.In sum, the present study proves the effectiveness of peer feedback activities in oralinstruction. Due to its positive effects on enhancing learners’ oral proficiency, peerfeedback, combined with assistant teacher feedback, should be applied to authenticcollege English oral instruction, which contributes to improving the current situation oforal instruction and yielding more effects.