A Study On Effect Of Trained Peer Feedback On English Writing Proficiency And Writing Motivation

With the emphasis of English writing teaching shifting from product approach to process approach, peer feedback, as one of the important components of process approach, has gained much attention from many researchers in the English as Second Language field. Though a large number of researchers have conducted experiments to investigate the effect of peer feedback on students' English writing proficiency, the positive effect of peer feedback in some particular contexts is still in doubt, and the effective ways of how peer feedback can be implemented need to be found through more practice.Based on previous studies on peer feedback abroad and at home, the present study aimed to investigate the effect of trained peer feedback on English writing proficiency and writing motivation, and to see how much peer feedback students incorporated in their revisions. 88 first-year non-English majors from a university in Nanchang were chosen as the participants. Among them, 48 students in class one that belonged to the experiment group received peer feedback on the first draft and written teacher feedback on the second draft. On the other hand, 40 students in class two that belonged to the control group received teacher feedback on both the first draft and the second draft, with the first draft receiving oral teacher feedback while the second draft receiving written teacher feedback. The result of pre-test showed that there was no obvious difference between these two groups in the aspect of English proficiency. The experiment lasted one semester and had four rounds, with each round lasting three weeks.Pre-test and post-test, together with pre-test questionnaire and post-test questionnaire, were conducted. Students also accomplished four writing tasks in the experiment. Besides, an interview with six students was carried out after the experiment. The data was collected and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively.The obtained results showed that trained peer feedback had a positive effect on students' English writing proficiency and writing motivation. Students in EG outperformed students in CG in the post-test, and students' intrinsic motivation was influenced to a larger extent when compared with students' extrinsic motivation.Besides, students incorporated more percentages of peer feedback in their revisions at the end of semester, with the spelling being the top.The findings of the present study provided some implications for English writing teaching in college class. It was suggested that peer feedback should be seen as a complementary source of teacher feedback and should be properly introduced into English writing teaching class to improve college students' writing proficiency.