A Comparative Study Of Peer And Teacher Feedback On English Major Graduates’ Writing

Feedback, as a direct communication between the reader and the writer, hasthe most practical value for the writer’s revision, and this makes it an importantsection in the writing process. The purpose of this study, therefore, was toinvestigate the characteristics of peer and teacher feedback in English writinginstruction, to explore the students’ reaction to those two kinds of feedback, andalso to probe into the successful degree of students’ revision as a result of peer andteacher feedback. It is hoped that this study can shed light on what kind of teacherfeedback and peer feedback help EFL writing. Eight EFL learners who were intheir first year of post-graduate study at China University of Geosciences inBeijing, along with an American female teacher who taught those eight studentsthe academic writing course, participated in this research. The research lasted forone academic year, that is, two semesters. Altogether, four writing assignments,which include the task types of synthesis, book review, summary and response,were collected and analyzed. Three areas, including the characteristics of teacherand peer feedback in form and content, the revision effects of teacher and peerfeedback, and the students’ attitude toward teacher and peer feedback, are studiedand discussed. Research results showed that generally EFL students opted forteacher feedback over peer feedback since they considered the teacher as anauthority figure while lacking confidence in the writing ability of their peerclassmates. Specifically, five features in form and content of the teachercomments and peer comments are found, including the comments’ length, thesyntactic forms, the focus of comments, the use of hedges among comments, andthe comments’ generality. As to the revision effects of peer and teacher feedback,results indicated that55.5%of teacher feedback generated revision, while47.6%of peer feedback elicited revision. Moreover, through comparing the scores that students gained for their papers before and after receiving the teacher feedback, itwas found that teacher feedback brought students with successful revision.However, through the teacher’s negative comments for students’ revision afterpeer feedback, it was evident that peer feedback failed to tremendously improvestudents’ writing. About students’ attitude to and expectation from peer feedbackand teacher feedback, interviews with students revealed that they deemed teacherfeedback significant and beneficial, and they preferred its combination with peerfeedback, though they were uncertain about the usefulness of peer feedback. Thiswas because students thought that they could benefit from the peer review processthrough reading and commenting on others’ writing. Students hoped that in thefuture the teacher could give more direct feedback with specific revision optionsand that the teacher can place much more stress on their grammatical errors.Meanwhile, students hoped that peer feedback could be done in class rather thanafter school at home.