An Empirical Study On The Effect Of Peer Feedback And Juku Grading System On Non-english Major Students’ Writing Proficiency

As a significant activity in English writing, providing feedback plays an increasinglyimportant role in the teaching practice of college English writing. Different types of feedbackhave been applied widely to English writing teaching in recent years, and the study offeedback has drawn extensive attention from considerable researchers. The feedback patternsinvolved in previous researches have mainly focused on teacher and peer feedback. With theEnglish teaching reform advancement in the higher education of China, the computer-andInternet-oriented teaching models have been effectively implemented in EFL (English as aForeign Language) context.The present study is tentatively undertaken to explore the different influence of peerfeedback and Juku Grading System on college non-English major students writing, whichintends to answer the following questions:1) What is the students’ attitude towards peer feedback and Juku Grading System?2) How do peer feedback and Juku Grading System affect students’writing?3) What is the ideal feedback in students’ opinion?In this experiment,84students who participated in this research were sophomores,majoring in Chemistry and coming from two parallel classes of Shanxi Normal University.The study employed the product approach to have students learn how to write a better essaywhich meets the requirement of CET-4. The writing program of experimental procedureslasted for17weeks, during which14writing tasks were completed. Subjects in thisexperiment were divided into two groups, that is, experimental group one and experimentalgroup two. EG one was given peer feedback while EG two was assessed by Juku GradingSystem when students accomplished their compositions. Finally, the teacher gave furtherexplanations of typical mistakes occurring in the students’ compositions of the two groups. The study adopts pre-test, post-test, questionnaire and semi-structured interviews tocompare students’ attitudes towards this issue. Besides, SPSS19.0is used to analyze relateddata.The major findings of this thesis are as follows:1) Students’ scores both in EG one andEG two have increased in the post-test. What’s more, compared with the scores of pre-test,significant difference exists in the post-test. However, students in EG one have made greaterprogress than students in EG two.2) The students are supportive of both peer feedback andJuku Grading System because each form has its own advantages, but it is necessarily noticedthat the students prefer peer feedback because peer feedback is not merely advantageous interms of language form of the compositions, but also effective in helping students deal withtheir shortcomings in content and discourse. However, Juku Grading System focuses on thegrammatical errors only.3) The ideal feedback in students’opinion is that teacher feedback arecompatible with peer feedback and Juku Grading System, which is beneficial to non-Englishmajor students writing proficiency.Accordingly, peer feedback and Juku Grading System, in the succeeding collegeEnglish writing settings, can be adopted as important complements to teacher feedback topromote college students’ writing ability.