A Study On The Application Of Peer Feedback Strategies Based On Activity Theory To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

English Writing,as the main way of language output,plays a vitally important role in senior high school English teaching,which can reflect students' comprehensive ability of using English.Thus,in order to enhance the teaching level of English writing,a number of studies have focused on the feasibility and effectiveness of applying peer feedback to writing teaching.Based on Vygotsky's Activity Theory,this study constructs five major strategies in peer feedback: external resources,bilingual communication,writing criteria,playing different roles and seeking help from peers and teachers,explores the application of peer feedback strategies to English writing teaching in senior high school,and aims at providing new teaching ideas for writing teaching.The study intends to answer three questions: 1)What effects do peer feedback strategies have on the accuracy of students' English writing? 2)What effects do peer feedback strategies have on the complexity of students' English writing? 3)What are the effects of peer feedback strategies on students' evaluative ability in English writing?This study takes 76 students from two classes of Grade One in a senior high school in Liaoning Province as the subjects and carries out a 16-week teaching experiment.Class One is the control class(CC),which applies teacher feedback in writing teaching,and Class Two is taken as the experimental class(EC)to implement peer feedback.Quantitative and qualitative analysis methods are used,and tests,questionnaire,and interview are adopted as research instruments.The experimental data are finally analyzed by SPSS21.0.The major findings of this study are drawn as follows: First,after implementing peer feedback strategies,the students' writing accuracy in the experimental class has been greatly improved,among which the improvement of low level students is the most obvious.Second,the students in the experimental class have made progress in writing complexity,especially the middle and high level students.Third,the application of peer feedback strategies has improved students' evaluative ability and their enthusiasm of giving feedback,helping them to find out the problems in peers' writing accurately and give more feasible feedback suggestions.The study proves that the application of peer feedback strategies are conducive to conducting peer feedback and improving students' English writing ability,which hassignificant implications for English writing teaching in senior high school.However,owing to the differences in emotion,cognition and personality among students,their language proficiency and writing ability are not the same,so there are also differences in the choice of peer feedback strategies.Therefore,further research is needed on how these variables affect the quality of peer feedback in English teaching.