A Study On The Application Of Peer Feedback In Teaching English Writing In Junior High School

Evaluating is one of the important processes in teaching English writing.And peer feedback is an important type of evaluation method in writing teaching.There have been many studies on peer feedback both at home and abroad.Most of the existing studies pay attention to college students and senior high school students,but few of them discuss its effects on students in junior high schools.Based on the process writing approach,cooperative learning theory and the zone of proximal development theory,the writer applies peer feedback in English classrooms in junior high school,to discuss the feasibility and effectiveness of peer feedback in English writing instruction,to investigate students' attitudes towards peer feedback,to find out the influence of peer feedback on students' writing skills,and to make suggestions to promote effective peer feedback in English writing instruction in junior high school.The study is carried out in one class in Grade eight in Pingshun Middle School.Both quantitative and qualitative data are obtained in the research.Two questionnaires concerning the attitudes towards peer feedback are adopted before and after the application of peer feedback in writing teaching.In the questionnaires,students' attitudes towards the activities involved in peer feedback and evaluating ability as well as the effect of peer feedback are investigated.The data of the questionnaires is analyzed by SPSS software.To get further information about the effect of peer feedback on students' writing skills,the writer conducts an interview at the end of the study.The findings of the study have demonstrated that the application of peer feedback impacts greatly on students' attitudes towards peer feedback and writing skills.1)After the practice of peer feedback,most of the students hold positive attitudes towards peer feedbackand the activities involved in peer feedback.Peers' evaluating ability has been acknowledged by more students.In addition,students think that peer feedback is more helpful in improving their compositions in structure area than in content and language area in writing.However,some of the students still doubt their peers' ability of giving accurate feedback,they suggest that students who are at a higher level of English proficiency should be selected as feedback givers.Many students suggest that peer feedback should be followed by teacher feedback.2)From the interviews with the students,there are four benefits of peer feedback that contribute positively to students' writing skills.Peer feedback enhances audience awareness and promotes self-reflection.It also promotes cooperative learning and enables students to learn from each other.Peer feedback enables students to be familiar with the evaluation standard.All of these benefits of peer feedback are helpful in improving students' writing skills.The research demonstrates the feasibility and effectiveness of peer feedback in English writing teaching in junior high school.Peer feedback can be taken as an important complementary method to teacher feedback,which can promote English writing.