Effects Of Trained Peer Feedback On EFL Argumentative Writing:A Longitudinal Study

Peer feedback is a paramount process in which students work together in small groups to offer feedback and provide suggestions on one another's writing is compatible with the approaches to foreign language teaching in formative assessment,especially in higher education.Researchers have proved that peer feedback benefits both teachers and students,but it still has some drawbacks.Thus,the students need teacher's guidance and support to balance teacher's feedback and peer feedback during the whole process of writing.Online platform has been considered a viable tool for both teaching and learning in writing.The scoring mechanism in the online platform in the present is an essential component when the students finish all their learning tasks including giving and receiving peer feedback.However,there is scant information on how trained peer feedback functions on online scoring mechanism(“course credit” in this study)driven environment in foreign language classroom.This thesis investigates the how students perceive the usefulness of trained peer feedback in course credit driven environment and the effects of teacher's training on the quality of students' peer feedback and their writing competency.It also examines how the trained peer feedback influence the students' writing ability.Quantitative and qualitative methods were conducted to collect and analyze data from questionnaires,interviews,self-reflective protocols and classroom observations in this study for two argumentative essays before and after teacher's training on peer feedback.A hundred and forty-five non-English major students at a university in south China participated in the study.The results indicated that most of the students had positive attitudes towards the trained peer feedback and they perceived peer feedback influence their performance on grammar and language use most.The scores of the essays before and after training showed significant difference which demonstrated the participants developed their writing competency in organization and support items.In addition,the types of peer feedback changed in content and organization after training.The students also expressed their opinions about the peer feedback binary rubric and the application of online scoring mechanism.