| Peer feedback is an essential part in the process approach which has been studied as a separate object by many scholars.It incarnates the advantages of paying attention to the writing process and students' subject position during writing activities.Writing process is no longer considered as output process for a disposable product,therefore,the class is characterized by richness and communicability which improves the students' writing motivation to some extent.This study attempted to expand the scope of application for peer feedback based on the activity theory,meanwhile,to investigate the students' attitude to peer feedback and its influence on writing motivation.Hence,this study aimed to clarify the following three questions:1.What is the students' attitude to peer feedback?2.Does peer feedback improve the students' writing motivation?3.How peer feedback affects the students' writing motivation in three aspects as intrinsic motivation,extrinsic motivation and self-efficacy?In this study,a twelve-week comparative experiment of English writing teaching was conducted in two classes in private school in Xiamen.One class was designed as experimental class and the other one as control class to eliminate the teachers' individual factors.Peer feedback and conventional teaching mode was introduced into the experimental and controlled class respectively in product approach.The first draft was evaluated based on the feedback in marking table by partners after group discussion,and then the second draft was corrected and graded by teacher.Meanwhile,the teacher not only emphasized the quality of the final draft,but also investigated the completion situation of feedback and individual performance along with reward and punishment mechanism.According to comparative analyses of the English writing motivation level before and after experiment,the results of the questionnaire and interview,this study reached conclusions as follows.1.There was a positive attitude to the effects of peer feedback on content and organization in writing among students,but with limited effects on the language using.Students considered that it helped to avoid the same mistakes and to gain more ideas and inspiration after correcting partner's draft.It is noticed that most of the students expressed their intention to continue this activity.2.Peer feedback had a positive impact on writing motivation,and significant improvement was observed in self-efficacy,which leads to a win-win situation in learning communities through teamwork and cooperation.3.Extrinsic motivation was easily triggered by certain external stimulus in English writing.For instance,students took actively part in peer feedback for honor and award after reward and punishment mechanism introduced.As a result,students' enthusiasm in writing was enhanced,so did the conception of teamwork and self-learning ability.Having reflected on the problems of teachers,students and teaching design existed in the process of peer feedback in English writing,the author showed some enlightenment.1.Teacher plays a decisive role in the teaching activity.They ought to make sure every teaching procedure goes well by reinforcing the foundation in knowledge,teaching skills,and ability to deal with kinds of teaching problems.In addition,they are supposed to update their theoretical knowledge and teaching ideas.2.Refined training content for peer feedback in advance is necessary to avoid too much pressure on the students.3.Reasonable division and well-defined rules guarantee the function of teamwork.4.It is worthwhile that peer feedback is not the exclusive feedback source,it should be combined with feedback from teacher,self-feedback and social evaluation during English writing process.5.English writing shouldn't be confined in classroom;learning communities not only include teachers and students,but also parents and society,which bring students a writing environment of multi-way communication. |
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