A Study Of Peer Feedback In College English Writing

In the last few decades, with the prevalence of the communicative approach, the focus of teaching has started to shift from grammar and translation to listening and speaking. Under the traditional approach, many students are turned out to be "mute" or "deaf" in English. The implementation of the new approach has helped a lot in improving students’ ability in listening, speaking, reading and writing. However, compared to the former three skills, writing is the least improved. This is especially true for College English students. In their writings, teachers can often see Chinglish, inadequate content, lack of coherence, etc.Besides, writing instruction for College English students is far from satisfactory. For one thing, no special time is planned for writing in the course schedule; for another, the class time designated for English learning is too limited. Most teachers have no time to deal with writing, let alone offer students systematic training of writing skills. Students are simply given a topic to write either in class or out of class. After finishing their first writing draft, they directly hand in their writing to the teacher for correction. Their first writing becomes the final product and the composition process is linear. Under such circumstance, students unconsciously develop a habit of writing just for completing a task. Few students do self-revision work, needless to say negotiating with peers and receiving peer feedback.According to some research findings, peer feedback has not only positive effects but also negative ones on students’ writing. For example, to maintain group harmony, peers may not be objective in commenting on each other’s writing. On the other hand, peers may be skeptical about each other’s ability in writing correction. The present study is aimed to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of peer feedback of College English students’ writing. What is more, the thesis also takes into consideration an often-cited suggestion as to train students how to perform in the peer feedback activity. The researcher conducts an experiment using College English students as participants. To maximize the effect of peer feedback, the researcher carries out model feedback and trains the participant to perform in the peer feedback activity.The participants involved in the experiment were91College English students from Southwest University divided into two groups with45in the Experimental Group (EG) and another46in the Control Group (CG). During the16-week sessions, the EG was instructed to conduct peer feedback while the CG was under the traditional English writing instructions receiving teacher feedback only. The research instruments included the pre-test, post-test, questionnaire, draft tasks and interview. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were adopted to deal with the data collected.The experimental results show that students gain benefits from peer feedback both in their writing proficiency and attitude towards writing, students hold a favorable attitude towards peer feedback activity. Their sense of cooperation is strengthened by this method of writing correction, which will surely have a beneficial influence on their writing practice and English learning in the long run.The present study is of great significance theoretically and practically. Theoretically, the research testified the effectiveness of peer feedback in College English writing, confirming what prior researchers have found in their studies. Practically, the application of peer feedback in College English writing can be a good supplementary to teacher correction, reliving much of the teacher’s burden and leaving more time to better the teaching of writing.