Peer Feedback In Process-centered EFL Writing In Vocational School

The teaching of writing is one of the important parts of ELT, and composition correction is a compulsory step for students to practice writing. With the transition from product approach to process approach in teaching writing in the last 20 years or so, researchers abroad have begun to employ collaborative learning theory in second language teaching and peer revision in teaching writing skills in a second language. Due to the rapid increase in enrollment in the past few years in vocational schools as well as colleges and the shortage of teachers of English, teachers usually spend a lot of their precious time responding to their students' writing. Yet the students' writing skills have not been improved significantly.The present paper is an experimental analysis of the influence of peer revision on vocational school students' writing skills in English. The author selected 106 first-year students who were divided into two classes randomly and conducted a one-semester-long experiment. The experimental group received peer revision training while the controlled group was taught in the traditional method, and both pre-test and post- test and questionnaires were carried out. The research project aims at exploring whether peer revision is more effective than the traditional method in improving low-leveled vocational school students' achievement in writing and whether the students' major achievements are in contents and structures or vocabulary and grammar. The data collection methods of this research project are questionnaires, pre- and post-experiment testing, peer comments, first draft and revised draft compositions. Comparison of the results of the pre- and post-tests, questionnaires and the students achievements indicates that writing achievements of the experimental group improved more than those of the controlled group, that the number of students in favor of the employment of peer revision in the experimental group is much more higher than that of the controlled group, and that the students from the experimental group are more concerned with the contents and global structures rather than local errors in their compositions.The results of this research suggest that peer revision is an efficient method in teaching writing skills in English in that it develops students reader awareness, sense of cooperation and responsibility, reduces their anxiety for writing, increases their fluency in writing andenhances most students' learner initiative. Meanwhile, it can reduce the teachers' burden in responding to students' writing and thus can play quite an active role in teaching large classes in China. Yet the present research also reveals that eflfective peer revision can never be conducted easily because students have to be trained on how to carry out peer revision and purposeful practice tasks as well as reasonable grouping plans need to be developed.