The Application Study Of Peer Response In Middle School English Writing

In the fields of language teaching and the teaching of writing there has been much discussion over the last two to three decades of the value of group work.The learner-centered methodology of the communicative language teaching approach and the privileging of peer collaboration by writing process advocates,both as a means of expanding the audience beyond the teacher and providing a supportive,facilitative environment,have helped make peer response activities commonplace in the second language writing classroom.Peer response activities,in which students work together to provide feedback on one another’s writing in both written and oral formats through active engagement with each other’s progress over multiple drafts,have become a common feature of L2 writing instruction.Nowadays,the existing researches of peer review in China mainly focus on higher education study groups or senior high school students,but pay little attention to junior high school students.From this point of view,the purpose of this research is to implement peer review in the English writing teaching for eighth-grade students in junior high school,to explore the validity of peer review,to find out whether it can improve the students’ writing and what is the students’ attitude towards it.The experiment was carried out in two parallel classes in the eighth grade.The experimental classes adopted peer review teaching method,while the control class was taught in accordance with the traditional writing teaching mode.In the experimental class,the students were grouped in random way.During a semester experiment,the researcher carried out pre-test and post-test,two questionnaires were also adopted before and after the experiment.We analyzed the pre-test and post-test data with SPSS22 statistical software after the data were collected.The results of this research show that peer review has feasibility and effectiveness for eighth-grade students in junior high schools,meanwhile,the feasibility and effectiveness of the way is more oblivious than the traditional writing teaching mode.Moreover,the attitudes of students to peer response were favorable,from students’ points of view,they can get the spirit of cooperation,reduce the anxiety of writing,and advance the ability of writing.In conclusion,peer response activities are accepted and workable in junior L2 writing class,but this model can never replace the teacher feedback in writing instruction.Teachers need to take a combination of these two feedback models in practical teaching process.