Roles Of The Teacher In Peer Response Activity Of EFL Writing

Peer response has been widely employed in L1 writing classrooms in English speaking countries and recently has attracted attention of researchers home and abroad in its application in SL/FL context. However, most researches aim to analyze the effects of peer response, neglecting research on the necessity and importance of the teacher's participation. This dissertation mainly studies the roles of the teacher in peer response activity of EFL writing.The thesis is composed of five chapters. The author, in the first place, reviews theories underpinning the use of peer response and related studies, which lays the foundation for the application of peer response in EFL context. Then the author generally introduces the definition of'role'and teacher's roles, affecting factors, current studies, and especially mentions teacher roles based on the theoretical foundation of peer response. After that, the author puts forward three research questions: 1) What kinds of roles does the teacher play in peer response activity of EFL writing? 2) Does the teacher influence students'attitudes toward peer response and writing in general? 3) What effects do teacher roles have on students'achievement of English writing? A quasi-experiment was conducted among 86 non-English major college freshmen in Shanghai Normal University. Two classes of the same level were chosen: one served as the experimental class; the other as the control class. The experiment lasted 18 weeks, during which the two classes received equal forms of writing training model and peer response, and the degree of the teacher's participation was more emphasized in the experimental class. Quantitative analysis on the data collected was dealt with by the statistical package SPSS 11.5, and qualitative analysis was also made by means of questionnaire survey, students'self-reflection pieces, teacher observation and case studies. The results obtained shows that 1) the teacher has several roles in the process of peer response activity of EFL writing; 2) teacher's role has positive effect on students'attitudes towards peer response and writing; 3) teacher's role helps improve students'writing quality. Therefore, the author believes that activities which are student-centered do not exclude the teacher, and that teachers are facing the challenges of playing new roles. The suggested solutions are in-service training on education theories and SLA theories, refreshing of knowledge on a regular basis, flexibly and reasonably applying advanced teaching methods from foreign countries, thus better promoting the progress that students make in the process of learning.The present study may shed light on research of similar kinds. But due to the short period of the experiment, the findings are limited and many aspects are not included. Researches of larger scale on these aspects are expected.