An Empirical Study Of The Effects Of Peer Revision On College Students' Writing Self-efficacy

English writing competence,as a key skill of English learners,can effectively promote the learners' internalization of basic linguistic knowledge.However,for a long time,in the process of cultivating students' English language competence in listening,speaking,reading,writing and translating,confined to inadequate teaching hours and students' insufficient interest and confidence in English writing,college students always find their English writing competence inferior to other competences.Consequently,how to stimulate students' writing interest and writing confidence,and how to construct scientific and effective English writing methods have turned out to be an increasingly difficult challenge for both English teachers and researchers.Deriving from self-efficacy,writing self-efficacy is a key motivational factor in writing process.Many researches indicated that writing self-efficacy could predict and influence students' English learning achievement.In light of these researches,we may infer that if we adopt scientific and effective teaching methods in English writing teaching to stimulate students' writing self-efficacy,we may well have a good prospect for a better writing performance.A lot of researchers have proved that peer revision was an effective way to promote students' interest in writing and relieve their anxiety.These researches inspired us to ponder whether peer revision could produce a significant impact on college students' writing self-efficacy.After consulting relevant literature,the author found fewer studies of the effects of peer revision on college students' English writing self-efficacy.Therefore,the author carried out an empirical study to investigate whether the application of peer revision in college English writing class helps to foster and enhance students' sense of English writing self-efficacy.The study is intended to answer three research questions:(1)Whether peer revision has a significant effect on college students' English writing self-efficacy.(2)Whether there is any significant difference between the effects that peer revision has on the English writing skill self-efficacy and English writing task selfefficacy.(3)Whether there is any significant difference in the effects that peer revision has on the English writing self-efficacy of students with high,middle and low English proficiency.Eighty-four freshmen majoring in accounting from two parallel natural classes in Shandong Youth University Of Political Science,were selected as participants in this study.The two classes were chosen at random to serve as experimental class(EC)and control class(CC).In the first week,an English proficiency test was carried out both in EC and CC so as to investigate whether the English proficiency of students in both classes were similar,and in addition,to divide students in EC into three groups:high,middle and low English proficiency.Then a questionnaire of English writing self-efficacy was handed out to all students in both classes,with an aim to investigate whether there was any significant difference between the two classes.In the second week,students in EC were trained to learn about the application of peer revision under the teacher's guidance.During the following fourteen weeks,students in EC employed peer revision while the traditional teacher revision was applied in CC.At the end of the semester,students in both classes were required to complete the postquestionnaire of English writing self-efficacy for the second time to investigate whether peer revision could produce a more substantial effect on their English writing self-efficacy than teacher revision.By means of SPSS V22.0,the quantitative analysis to the data collected both led to the following conclusions:(1)Peer revision has a significant effect on the college students' English writing self-efficacy.(2)There is no significant difference between the effects of peer revision on the English writing task self-efficacy and that on English writing skill self-efficacy.(3)Compared to those with high English proficiency,the English writing selfefficacy of students with middle and low English proficiency shows more significant improvement,especially to those with middle proficiency.To sum up,the study proves that peer revision helps to enhance learners' English writing self-efficacy in our college English writing teaching.On basis of all these,the author proposes some pedagogical implications for college English writing teaching as well as some limitations about the study.Besides,some suggestions for the future study are also put forward.