The efficacy of peer review in a university-level ESL writing class

Currently, there is a great debate concerning whether peer review is an effective activity in the university-level English-as-a-Second-Language writing classroom. Peer review offers the unique opportunity for second-language writers to share their writing, evaluate others' work, and discuss their observations and opinions about writing in an authentic environment. Despite these theoretical advantages, some studies indicate that peer review is not very effective in the ESL classroom because students doubt the accuracy and validity their peer's comments. Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic issues can further complicate the activity. Indeed, peer review in an ESL classroom can be pedagogically tricky.;This study investigated the interactional dynamics of peer review sessions in university-level ESL writing classrooms. Participants were recorded during one peer review session; after the session, they had the chance to make changes to their drafts. Participants turned in both rough and final drafts of their papers, and also offered feedback regarding how helpful and effective they found peer review to be. The spoken data were evaluated to determine the types of interactions that occurred and their functions. The written data were evaluated to determine the quantity and quality of the changes that the participants made. The two data sets were then compared to determine whether (and to what extent) the peer review interactions led to improvements on the drafts.;The data indicated that suggestions made during peer review correlated to positive changes if the participants negotiated the suggestion, and if the suggestion pertained to global-level issues in the paper. While the data showed that participants preferred to make changes unilaterally, it also indicated that peer-reviewed suggestions correlated with a higher percentage of positive changes than writer-initiated suggestions. Further, the data indicated that peer review was particularly favored by those participants who had no previous experience with this activity. These results indicated that peer review is an effective activity, especially for students who are new to it. It is best framed as supplementary to the student's existing writing process. Future research should focus on triangulating the data with post-activity student interviews, in order to corroborate the results.