The Effects Of Online Peer Feedback And Teacher Feedback On English Writing Of Non-English Major Postgraduates

Feedback is an important part of the process writing approach,especially for the improvement of English writing motivation and writing proficiency.Only adopting teacher feedback results in heavy feedback tasks for teachers and untimely feedback for students.At the same time,the heavy burden of teachers’ feedback will lead to the reduction of writing training tasks in teaching,thus limiting the improvement of students’ writing proficiency.In recent years,peer feedback has been increasingly valued with the prevalence of process writing approach.Research has shown that peer feedback has many advantages.Unfortunately,the application of peer feedback in college English is limited,because the large-class teaching makes it difficult to implement and monitor effectively.Thus,online feedback is favored by more and more teachers and students.The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of online peer feedback and teacher feedback on English writing of non-English major postgraduates.This study mainly aims to examine the following four questions:1)What are the differences between effects of online peer feedback and teacher feedback on students’ writing motivation?2)What are the differences between effects of online peer feedback and teacher feedback on students’ critical thinking?3)What are the differences between effects of online peer feedback and teacher feedback on students’ writing proficiency?4)What’s the inter-influence of English writing motivation,critical thinking and writing proficiency?This study is principally based on experimental research with assistance of questionnaires to answer the research questions mentioned above.86 non-English major postgraduate freshmen of LZJU were selected as participants to conduct a 16-week teaching experiment,43 in the experimental class and 43 in the control class.Both experimental class and control class adopted the process writing approach.The experimental class conducted peer feedback based on Peerceptiv,while the control class conducted teacher feedback based on Juku.The data of students’ composition and writing motivation questionnaires in pre-test and post-test were collected,and all data were analyzed by T-test and Pearson correlation through SPSS 28.0.The main findings are as follows:First of all,there was a substantial difference in IM-achievement between the experimental class and control class(p=.012<.05).It shows that peer feedback is more effective than teacher feedback in stimulating the intrinsic motivation of writing and improving the writing level.However,the average extrinsic writing motivation of the experimental class was a bit lower than that in the control class,but no significant difference existed(p>.05),indicating that teacher feedback was more effective in stimulating the extrinsic writing motivation.Secondly,both online teacher feedback and peer feedback can help cultivate students’ critical thinking.The results evince that students’ critical thinking in the experimental class and the control class is significantly improved after the experiment(p=.026<.05),which shows that Peerceptiv peer feedback is more helpful to improve students’ critical thinking than Juku teacher feedback.Thirdly,the two feedback methods have a positive effect on improving the overall English writing proficiency.Compared with the student’s writing ability in the control class,the experimental class has been significantly improved(p=.004<.05).It shows that peer feedback is more effective than teacher feedback to improve students’ writing proficiency.Finally,intrinsic writing motivation and critical thinking are highly correlated(p<0.01).And there exists a significant positive correlation between critical thinking and writing scores(p<0.01),which shows that intrinsic writing motivation helps to cultivate students’ critical thinking,and critical thinking has a direct impact on improving English writing.Hence,we can conclude that critical thinking positively affects English writing level,while intrinsic writing motivation indirectly affects English writing level and language ability by affecting critical thinking.Based on the above findings,this research puts forward the following enlightenment for English writing teaching: 1)Teaching feedback should not only focus on the language form,but also encourage students to think boldly and express their personal opinions actively.In addition,in the English writing course,adequate preparation in pre-writing is beneficial to activate students’ critical thinking;2)Teaching feedback should be combined with modern education technology.The effective usage of computer-assisted teaching can help teachers free from heavy feedback tasks,in that it’s easier to supervise students’ learning behaviors and provide personalized guidance.Furthermore,computer-assisted teaching can help stimulate students’ writing motivation and cultivate students writing autonomy.In a word,both Peerceptiv peer feedback and Juku teacher feedback play a positive role in stimulating students’ writing motivation and improving writing ability.