A Study Of Effects Of Peer Feedback On English Writing Of Students At Different Language Proficiencies

Peer feedback has been extensively studied in the field of second language learning, which can provide us a lot of enlightenment. But in the field of foreign language learning, the number of studies is relatively small and studies which conform to the situations of Chinese students are even rare. So the present study aims at exploring the attitudes of students at different language proficiencies towards peer feedback, what actions they take after they receive peer feedback and the effects of peer feedback on English writing of students at different language proficiencies, with an attempt to improve students’awareness of importance of peer feedback in the writing process and to shed insights into corrective feedback and writing instructions. The effects in this study include changes in fluency and accuracy of students’English writing, and also changes in students’understandings of nature of writing and so on.The12participants in the study were all freshmen of non-English major in a university in China. The researcher divided them into two groups:feedback receivers and feedback givers. The4feedback receivers,2at high proficiency,2at low proficiency, were the focus of the present study. The8feedback givers,4at high proficiency,4at low proficiency, were responsible to provide peer feedback. The4feedback receivers had to finish3writing tasks in the experiment respectively and each piece of writing received2copies of peer feedback, one from high level student, and the other from low level student. The researcher collected the first drafts, feedback drafts, final drafts, and review reports of students’each writing. In order to make sure the effectiveness of peer feedback, a peer feedback training was conducted to teach students how to carry out peer feedback appropriately. After the three writing tasks, an interview about20minutes was conducted to the4feedback receivers, which involved their attitudes towards and feelings about peer feedback.After the experiment, the researcher conducted a text analysis on students’drafts, analyzed the review reports and interviews. The major findings of the present study were as follows:First, both high and low proficient students liked peer feedback. But their attitude was a little conservative concerning their understanding and adoption of peer feedback. And they preferred feedback from high level students. Second, both high and low proficient students usually compared the two copies of feedback drafts when revising their writing. And they used peer feedback selectively. They used a feedback instance did not necessarily mean that they understood it. Among the feedback they used, some were understood, others were not. The same was true for feedback not used. Third, peer feedback brought immediate improvements in accuracy of the redrafts of the same writing task, but no improvements in fluency for students at both high and low language proficiencies. From the perspective of7language aspects, i.e. verb errors, noun errors, article errors, wrong word, spelling errors, sentence structure and other errors, both high and low proficient students benefited most in spelling and sentence structure, and little in other5aspects. Fourth, peer feedback brought improvements in a new writing task generally. But for students of high proficiency, peer feedback brought improvements in accuracy of the new writing task; and for students of low proficiency, peer feedback brought improvements in fluency. In terms of the7language aspects, peer feedback also helped students’ writing most in spelling and sentence structure. And high proficient students benefited more than low proficient students.