The Effects Of Teacher Feedback And Peer Feedback On Non-english Majors’ Writing

As one of the most significant ways to communicate, writing is an important tool topromote language acquisition in second language learning. Feedback, which is a significantpart of writing instruction, has already become an important issue in current SLA study. Inrecent years, many scholars have done a lot of research about the writing feedback. However,most of the research in this field in China is based on the theories introduced from abroad, andthe research conducted in the Chinese teaching context is far from enough.Based on an experiment and a questionnaire, this study examined40non-English majorsfrom Xingxiang College of Xiangtan University. It aimed to solve the following threequestions:(1) what are the characteristics of teacher feedback and peer feedback during therevision process?(2) What are the effects of teacher feedback and peer feedback on thequality of writing?(3) What is students’ attitude toward the two types of feedback?In the experiment, forty students were randomly divided into two groups on average: theteacher feedback group (hereafter called TFG) that received the written feedback fromteachers and the peer feedback group (hereafter called PFG) that received the writtenfeedback from a group of peer students. A comparative analysis of the scores the two groupsreceived in their writing, together with the result of the questionnaire, resulted in thefollowing conclusions:(1) teachers offered more usable feedback points and fewer unusablefeedback points than peers. In terms of the focus of feedback, teacher feedback focused moreon grammar and content but less on vocabulary. Peer feedback focuses more on grammar andvocabulary but less on organization.(2) With the process-oriented writing approach, thewriting of both TFG and PFG was improved, but teacher feedback is more effective than peerfeedback. In terms of the revisions students made with the help of feedback, students in TFGmade more revisions on grammar and contents while students in PFG focused more on therevisions of grammar and vocabulary.(3) Teacher feedback was more popular with studentsthan peer feedback. However, most students were aware of the benefits of peer feedback, andthey preferred the combination of both types of feedback.Based on the findings above, the author proposes that we should attach importance to thecombination of teacher feedback and peer feedback and offer effective peer feedback training.Furthermore, the multiple-drafts approach should be adopted in order to reform the currentwriting teaching mode.