Exploring The Effectiveness Of Integrating Group Peer Feedback And Teacher Feedback In College EFL Writing Instruction

Based on the theories of writing process,collaborative learning,and i+1hierarchical grouping mechanism inspired by Krashen's i+1 theory and Vygotsky's zone of proximal development theory,this thesis reports the effects of the peer feedback plus teacher feedback mode in College EFL Writing Teaching,the effects of group peer feedback on writing proficiency under different grouping conditions,and the students' attitude towards the different feedback modes.The study aims to explore the following research questions:(1)What are the effects of the group peer feedback plus teacher feedback mode in College EFL Writing Teaching?(2)Under conditions of different grouping,what are the effects of the group peer feedback plus teacher feedback mode on students' writing proficiency?(3)What are the effects of the group peer feedback plus teacher feedback mode on students' writing in terms of content,structure,grammar,vocabulary and mechanics?(4)What is students' attitude toward the two feedback modes?The subjects involved in the study were 90 non-English majors from three parallel classes of ZhenJiang Watercraft College.These three parallel classes were randomly assigned as the control class(CC),the experimental class one(EC1)and the experimental class two(EC2).The traditional teacher feedback mode was implemented in the CC,the group peer feedback plus teacher feedback mode was implemented in the EC1 and EC2,but they were grouped by the different way.The students in EC1 were grouped by the i+1 hierarchical grouping mechanism,and the students in EC2 were grouped by similar English writing proficiency.During the 12 weeks of experiment,pre-test,post-test,questionnaire and interview were adopted to collect data,and SPSS 19.0 was administrated to do statistical analysis.Detailed analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data yielded the following findings:1.Differences in the post-test writing scores between EC1 and CC are found to be statistically significant,which indicates that the group peer feedback plus teacher feedback mode is more effective in College EFL Writing Teaching than the traditional teacher feedback mode.In addition,there exist significant differences in the writingscores between pre-test and post-test in EC1 while no significant differences are found in the writing scores between pre-test and post-test in CC,which further demonstrates that through the 12-week group peer feedback plus teacher feedback training in the writing teaching students in EC1 have made more significant improvement in their writing scores than those in CC have.2.Under conditions of different grouping,there exist significant differences in the writing scores between pre-test and post-test both in EC1 and EC2,but the improvement in EC1 is more obvious.Besides,there exist differences in the improvement of students with different writing levels.Compared to the low and middle level students of EC2,those of EC1 have made more significant improvement.However there is no significant difference in the improvement of high level students in EC1 and EC2.All these show that the i+1 hierarchical grouping mechanism is more beneficial for students to make improvement in their writing,especially for those low and middle level students.3.The post-test writing scores of EC1 in the five writing aspects(content,structure,grammar,vocabulary and mechanics)are significantly higher than those of CC.In the EC1,the improvement in the vocabulary and structure is most obvious,then the content takes the second place,and there is little improvement in the mechanics(including spelling,punctuation,and capitalization).All these indicate that compared to the teacher feedback mode,the group peer feedback plus teacher feedback mode is more effective in helping students to make improvement in specific writing aspects,especially in enriching their vocabularies,organizing the structure and content of their compositions.4.The majority of students in EC hold positive attitude toward the peer feedback plus teacher feedback mode,and prefer to choose the peer feedback plus teacher feedback mode.They consider that the group peer feedback under the i+1 hierarchical grouping mechanism is more beneficial to the improvement of writing proficiency.Students without the peer feedback experience in CC have higher recognition of the teacher feedback than the peer feedback,but most of them are willing to try the peer feedback plus teacher feedback mode.In view of the results above,the present study will have some enlightenment for College EFL Writing Teaching.For teachers who seek effective writing teaching model and methods,the experiment conducted in the study can be taken use of and adopted at their disposal.Teachers may apply the group peer feedback plus teacher feedback mode to their writing teaching to effectively improve students' writing proficiency.In the implementation of the group peer feedback,i+1 hierarchical grouping mechanism is preferable to the improvement of writing proficiency of low and middle level students,and thus should be advocated in the future writing teaching.For learners,especially those low level students who are in need of good writing methods,feedback from both peers and teachers are more specific and beneficial for them to rewrite and revise their composition.