A Contrastive Study On The Effect Of Students’ Use And Understanding Of Teacher And Peer Feedback In English Writing Class Of High School

Writing, as an important skill for students in English learning, has been drawing researchers’ attention for a long time. The role feedback plays in improving students’ writing has been widely noticed. Some studies are carried out to detect which type of feedback is more effective, teacher or peer feedback. However, the effectiveness of teacher or peer feedback is only evaluated by the scores students get on the revised composition without considering the incorporated feedback may not necessarily successfully used and understood by the students.Instead of focusing on the scores students get on their redrafts or the new compositions, this study distinguishes learner’s use from their understanding and explores the factors affecting students response to different kinds of feedback by exploring the following three research questions:First, which type of feedback do the students use more efficiently to revise their writing, peer feedback or teacher feedback? Second, which type of feedback do the learners understand better, peer feedback or teacher feedback? Third, what factors, if any, affect students’response to feedback?Eighty-one students are involved in this study, and thirty-nine belong to peer feedback group. Content analyses of students’use of feedback in the third rounding of writing are made to explore the amount of used feedback, the levels of revision and the effectiveness of revision in each group. Then, students’understanding of feedback is detected through stimulated recall interviews. At last, fifteen students from each group participate in the interviews which aim to find out the factors that affect students’ response to feedback.Students’use of feedback is evaluated from the utilization of usable feedback, levels of revision and effectiveness of revisions. It is not hard to find that students used more teacher feedback than peer feedback in their revision. However, most teacher feedback is used at surface level in students’ revision, while peer feedback triggers more macro-meaning and micro-meaning changes. What’s more, as to the question that which type of written feedback do the learners understand better, it can be seen from the study that peer feedback points are more likely to be understood by the students compared with teacher feedback, and most incorporated teacher feedback are not understood. Besides, the study shows students’ attitude toward feedback and the explicitness of feedback have great influence on students’response to feedback.This study suggests the relative values of teacher or peer feedback. It reminds teachers of paying more attention to the levels and effectiveness of a certain feedback before adopting it. Besides, to truly develop students’writing proficiency, students understanding of feedback should be taken as equally important as students’use of feedback.