Effects Of Two Modes Of Peer Response On Chinese University Students’ EFL Writing: An Empirical Study

This empirical study focuses on effects of different modes of peer response on Chinese university students’EFL Writing. With the popularity of computer-mediated communication (CMC), Computer-mediated peer response (CMPR), as a combination of CMC and traditional face-to-face peer response (FFPR), has been adopted in language classrooms. CMPR refers to the activities in which students work collaboratively to improve their writing via computer-mediated communication. Although a considerable amount of studies have shown that peer response has a profound and positive effect on students’ revision, few investigations have examined CMPR in comparison to traditional FFPR, even less have examined characteristics of feedback from asynchronous CMPR and how the feedback influences students’ revision as well as writing quality. When thinking about adopting CMPR in classrooms, teachers and instructors keep asking questions, such as if students learn more under computer-mediated mode, what students gain and lose by making the transition from FFPR to CMPR. The use of technology in teaching is pointless or time-wasting if teachers fail to use it wisely to accomplish pedagogical goals; hence, it is vital for instructors and teachers of English to know the nature of different modes of peer response activities and to be aware how to most effectively use technology in curricula.Based on process writing theory and collaborative theory, the present study was conducted under an English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) academic writing context with the aim to provide valid references to the following questions:1) What types of feedback are generated from FFPR and asynchronous CMPR, in terms of global area versus local area?2) To what extend does feedback generated from different peer response modes influence revision differently?3) How does feedback influence overall writing quality? Microsoft Word was used as a communication tool for CMPR group and face-to-face communication was adopted in FFPR group. How FFPR and CMPR influences EFL writing differently were investigated through comparing the characteristics of feedback from FFPR and CMPR groups and through examining how the feedback actually influences EFL writers’revision and the overall writing quality. The results show that students from both groups produced larger portion of local comments, rather than global comments; only half of the comments were adopted for revision in both groups; in addition, only slight improvement in both group has been witnessed after revision. In short, asynchronous CMPR has shown little advantage over FFPR in this study.The small sample size and short study period in this study do not allow generalization to EFL learners in universities throughout China; a larger research sample with longer study period is needed for further research; besides, exploration on the combination of online and face-to-face peer response is expected to lead future research in the area of peer response.