| The English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School(2017)has asserted that English course in senior high school directs at the cultivation and development of learners' abilities of listening,speaking,reading,viewing and writing.Writing is among the indispensable key competencies of senior high school students.However,teacher-centered instruction is ubiquitous in writing class of high school all the same;and students still have difficulties in completing satisfactory writings.With the prevalence of computer-mediated communication(CMC),computer-mediated peer response(CMPR),which combined CMC with traditional face-to-face peer response(FFPR),has been gradually employed.Although a considerable mass of studies have proven that the peer response,as a strategy of feedback,has positive and profound effects on learners'writing quality and writing ability,few have conducted comparative studies between CMPR and FFPR,and even fewer have examined how the comments produced by the two peer response modes impact upon students' revision and the overall writing quality,as well as students'attitudes towards the two peer response modes.What's more,the application of modern educational technology in teaching is futile and time-consuming if instructors fail to utilize it reasonably;hence,it is vital for instructors to perceive various modes of peer response well and to be aware of how to use technology in teaching most effectively to accomplish pedagogical goals.Based on the process writing approach,the collaborative learning theory and the zone of proximal development theory(ZPD),this empirical study focuses on effects of FFPR and asynchronous CMPR on Chinese senior high school students' English as a foreign language(EFL)writing,aiming to afford available answers to the following questions:1,How do different peer response modes(FFPR&CMPR)influence student's peer comments?To what extent do students revise their compositions based on the comments made by their peers in the two modes?2.How do different peer response modes influence the quality of the writing?3.What are students' attitudes towards the two peer response modes?Two parallel classes,altogether 89 senior three students in Shenzhen were selected as the research participants.Students in class 1 employed FFPR as the peer response mode,while CMPR was used by class 2.The results indicate that students from both classes produce larger portions of local-level comments,rather than global-level;students in both classes do not adopt all the comments they have received into revision implying that they do not have a high level of trust for their peers' comments;slight improvement in both classes has been witnessed,and CMPR has shown little advantage over FFPR;in addition,students hold positive attitudes towards both the two peer response modes,and yet they prefer FFPR to CMPR slightly.The small sample size,short research period and research condition in this study do not allow generalization of the results to EFL learners in senior high schools all over China.A larger research sample with a longer research period is required for further research;besides,exploration on the combination of CMPR and FFPR is expected in the area of peer response. |
PDF Full Text Request