A Study Of Application Of Peer Feedback In English Writing Teaching At Senior High Schools

Writing as one of the basic skills in language application plays an important role in English learning.Writing level directly reflects students' comprehensive language skills.However,as regards the writing ability of students in senior high school,the situation is not optimistic.Firstly,they do not have adequate vocabulary and basic grammar knowledge.Secondly,lacking of content is another weakness in students' compositions.Thirdly,complete structure is also lacked in their compositions.Therefore,English writing teaching becomes one of the difficult tasks in senior high school.Educators continue to explore new writing teaching methods,but the appropriate evaluation methods are always ignored by them.The present writing class has many problems,and students lose interest and enthusiasm in English writing and their confidence decreases day by day.Peer feedback accords with the people-oriented philosophy of education,which is popular among educators at home and abroad.However,in China,this teaching method is always introduced in university classes,and the researches on its effectiveness in senior high school are ample.Therefore,how to use peer feedback to help senior high school students improve their writing ability becomes a new task in the process of English writing teaching.In this research,the author tries to introduce peer feedback into senior high school in order to make a compensation for current English writing class.Under this circumstance,this study aims to answer the following questions.1)What is the students' attitude toward peer feedback in English writing teaching? 2)What are the effects of peer feedback in English writing teaching?Uniting Cooperative Learning Theory,the Theory of Process Writing,and Theory of Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development as the theoretical foundation,the author carries out this research.Cooperative Learning Theory emphasizes that students can accomplish a task by cooperating and Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development thinks that students can make great progress with the help of others.In addition,Theory of Process Writing emphasizes the importance of group discussion before writing.All these three theories emphasize the importance of group work and peer assistance,which are inspirations to provide helpful methods and scientific tools during this research.Therefore,the author can group scientifically and teach effectively according to these theories.Combining qualitative research with quantitative research,the author adopts comparative analysis method to conduct the experiment.The experimental subjects are chosen from two parallel classes of Grade Two in Hua Xian No.1 Senior High School.The whole experiment will last for three months,and all the subjects will be asked to take part in the pre-test and the post-test.Meanwhile,students in the experimental class need to do a pre-questionnaire,a pre-interview,a post-questionnaire and a post-interview.During the process of this experiment,the experimental class adopts peer feedback while the control class still uses traditional teacher feedback in English writing class.The research results show as follows: 1)Students in the experimental class have a positive attitude toward peer feedback and they hope teacher can keep using this teaching method in future writing class.2)The effects of peer feedback mainly manifest in two aspects.Firstly,it can improve students' ability of revising composition.Secondly,it can improve students' English writing ability.After the experiment,both the control class and the experimental class have made improvement,and the final results of the experimental class are obviously better than the control class.Therefore,it can be concluded that peer feedback is an effective method in English writing teaching at senior high schools.