The Effects Of Peer Written Feedback On Students' Affect Of English Writing

Alongside the increasing interests in English process writing teaching,peer feedback has been studied by some researchers.Among those studies,more researchers have explored the effects of peer feedback on writing texts,whereas very few studies have investigated the effects of peer written feedback on its subjects of implementation-students' affect of English writing.However,the study on the writing subjects(students)is becoming an international trend.The person-centered study can focus on the individual differences of students and can encourage students to construct their knowledge actively with emotion.Therefore,this highlights the need for an empirical research on subjects of the implementation-students' affect of English writing.Theoretically,peer feedback can help students participate in the teaching activities actively,and construct their knowledge through cooperative learning,so as to enhance students' confidence and improve their learning enthusiasm.Thus,this study has set out to investigate the effects of peer written feedback on students' English writing affect as well as different students' attitude towards peer written feedback.The study involved 30 juniors of English majors in a class at a university in northwestern China.The study lasts eighteen weeks involves a pre-test and a post-test.The scores in the two tests(beginning and end of the semester)have been tested to find out whether peer written feedback can influence students' affective factors of English writing or not.During this period,students wrote five compositions in all and they were required to give their peer written feedback when they finished their rough draft.At the end of the semester,the results of the study were analyzed by a software tool Statistical Package for Social Sciences(SPSS)18.0 version.Two variables,the score of students' peer written feedback and the score of students' affective factors,have been tested by the Correlation Test to find out the relationships between these two variables.Results of the study showed that peer written feedback had impact on students' affect of English writing,and there was a significant correlation between peer written feedback and students' affective factors.In addition,most students would like to see positive peer written feedback after they take an extraordinary effort to finish their writing.This study reminds writing instructors to teach more than isolated composition skills,and instructors should respect students' individual difference,and understand the effect of peer written feedback on students' affective factors.What's more,they should help students to construct their knowledge actively through cooperative learning.Besides,through the implementation of peer written feedback,students would be more confident,and then their motivation would be improved so as to improve their writing abilities and learning enthusiasm.It is suggested that future studies employee more samples and longer experimental time to test students' emotional changes.