| This study was undertaken to investigate the effects of peer correction and self correction on junior high school students' writing performance and further compare the effectiveness of the two ways on lexical,syntax as well as discourse.The theoretical foundations of the study are Cooperative Learning Theory,Zone of Proximal Development,Input Hypothesis and Output Hypothesis.The significance of the study exists two aspects:to some extent,it not only enriches the previous study of effects of both peer correction and self correction on writing but also provides some useful suggestions on English writing teaching and learning for the sake of improving students' writing proficiency by exploring effective correction ways.The research questions addressed in the thesis are as follows:1)Which is more effective in students' writing performance in terms of lexical,peer correction or self correction?2)Which is more effective in students' writing performance in terms of syntax,peer correction or self correction?3)Which is more effective in students' writing performance in terms of discourse,peer correction or self correction?The subjects in this study were 30 students of Grade 9 from No.1 middle school in Sichuan Province.Instruments were writing tests and an interview.Before and after the experiment,writing tasks were given,which would serve as pre-test and post-test in this study.The author,with help of an experienced English teacher,scored students' writing and divided 30 students into Experimental Class and Control Class based on their pre-test results.In CC,the author adopted the self correction model while peer correction was adopted in EC.And SPSS 21.0 was used to make an independent samples t tests.For peer correction,three students with different language proficiency were formed into a group,among whom one student represented the highest level,one was intermediate achiever and another was low achiever based on Gong Xiaobin's group clarification(2007).At the end of the experiment,a semi-structured interview was conducted with 6 students from both EC and CC.The interview was conducted in Chinese and the author recorded the whole process and converted it into English for future research.This study yields the following major findings:Firstly,generally speaking,peer correction proves to be a more effective way than self correction in terms of lexical.Quantitatively,based on the lexical results,peer correction(Mean=3.9)is higher than self correction(Mean = 2.633).Besides,the p value of peer correction and self correction(P =.000<.05),suggests that significant differences exist between them.Qualitatively,students make less lexical errors than before after the experiment like misspelling.In addition,according to the lexical errors collected from students,it can be found that misspelling errors are the most easiest part for students to find out and correct so long as they are careful enough.And the reason for the differences between peer correction and self correction with regard to lexical may be due to the fact that students with peer correction are given sufficient input,that is,they are likely to talk about the frequently-used words and grammar points during this process,which can arouse their awareness of lexical and pay close attention to their next writing.Secondly,relatively speaking,peer correction proves to be more effective than self correction in terms of syntax.Quantitatively,based on the results of syntax,peer correction(Mean = 3.4)is higher than self correction(Mean = 2.867).Besides,the p value of two correction model(P =.003<.05),suggests that great differences exist between them and peer corrections performs better than self correction.Qualitatively,students make less syntax errors than before after the experiment.This may be that students ZPD potential are activated with help of peer correction.Specially speaking,thanks to peer correction,students are provided many chances to take their peers' suggestions and useful feedback,by which individual's awareness and abilities with regard to syntax are greatly activated and improved.Thirdly,on a whole,peer correction proves to be a more effective than self correction in terms of discourse.Quantitatively,based on the results of the discourse,peer correction(Mean ?3.9)is higher than self correction(Mean = 3.2).Besides,the p values of two correction model(P=.000<.05),suggests that there is a significant difference between them.Qualitatively,students make less discourse errors than before after the experiment.In addition,according to the discourse errors collected from students,it can be found that discourse errors are the most difficult part for students to find out and correct.Students with peer correction can learn from each other and ask for their peers' suggestions,which enables them to improve their discourse performance.On the contrary,students with self correction may have more trouble because nobody they can turn to when the problems are beyond their reach.The implications from the findings of the study are as follows:Firstly,students should be given more chances to utilize lexical and more communicative activities should be applied to encourage more students to communicate with each other,by which their abilities of lexical can be greatly improved.In addition,teachers should help students to master some effective ways to memorize new words like word-formation rules such as the affixes and suffixes.What's more,owing to peer correction's effectiveness on students'lexical,hence,students should be encouraged more to correct their lexical errors with help of peers.Secondly,teachers are required to cultivate students,syntax awareness by creating English environment for students to think not just translate English into Chinese word by word.In addition,peer correction should be strongly recommended in junior high school to improve students' English syntax.Thanks to peer correction,students can directly and clearly receive feedback from their peers on their syntax(chinglish,sentences fragments),at the same time,clearly realize their errors and further correct them.Finally,much attention should be drawn to the discourse teaching.Based on current writing teaching,to some extent,discourse are gained less attention than lexical and syntax.For most students,they do not know how to organize the whole passage.Therefore,teachers should help students learn how to use topic sentences and the conjunctions which link the sentences.In the course of discourse teaching,more exercises with regard to this aspect should be provided for students.The study has following limitations:Firstly,the number of samples employed in this study may not be large enough to be generalizable to the whole population.Secondly,the whole experiment was conducted in eight weeks in this study,which cannot guarantee its long-term effects on writing quality.Finally,some intervening variables might affect the results of the study,for example:the subjects have differences in personalities,interests,learning styles,living environment,etc,which may influence the students' English writing proficiency,in turn having great effect on the results of the experiment.Hence,future research should take all these variables into account. |
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