Impact Of Peer Feedback On Chinese Efl Learners' Writing In The Cross Border Exchange Program

Peer feedback has been widely adopted and studied in recent years because of its helpfulness in improving students' writing ability,and owing to the globalization,the settings of the studies on the peer feedback are no longer limited in the college English writing class or a small group of students from a common learning community.The cross border exchange program held by a Chinese and an American university represents an innovative application of peer feedback in English writing.Through investigating all the written feedback postsfollowing the movie reviews of 16 Chinese participants in the seventeenth round of cross border exchange on the website,and with the help of the reflections and a follow-up interview of the participants,this study attempts to provide more evidence for the impact of cross-border peer feedback on Chinese EFL learners' writing improvement,with the intention to explore the benefits and problems of the cross-border peer feedback and the attitude EFL learners hold for it.Results show that as for the writing of their peers' articles,American students were most likely to make comments on the content,while with regard to the exchange beyond writing,they tended to discuss the legal and gender issues with their Chinese partners.The most frequent suggestion for revision was concerned with content and the revisions initiated by the peer feedback were also mainly made on the content,which indicatesthat the cross-border peer feedback had a great influence on the revising of the content of the article.Most of the self-initiated revisions were made on the content,followed by the vocabulary,which implies that even though the peer feedback cannot obviously affect the revision of the language,it contributed a lot in the exchange of ideas.Furthermore,participants adopt the feedback because of their agreement on their peers' suggestion for the vocabulary and organization of the article and the desire to correct their original misunderstanding of the movie,or to make their content easier to be understood by their peers.However,a few feedbacks weredisapproved because of the participants' disagreement on the grammar,organization or the content of the article.Besides,the vague expression of the feedback provider,or the participants' ignorance of the feedback can also result in the rejection of it.Most of the participants held a positive view towards the cross-border peer feedback for it can directly help them to revise their draft,to improve their English writing and to have an in-depth understanding of the culture background of the two movies.Despite the benefits of the cross-border peer feedback,participants also pointed out some of its drawbacks.For example,the form to provide the peer feedback is not so convenient and the message of the feedback cannot be received synchronously.Finally,some implications of the study are given on the basis of the major finding,in the hope that the cross-border peer feedback can be fully made use of in English writing teaching.