A Study On Application Of Peer Feedback Based On The Scaffolding Theory In Senior High School Writing Teaching

Writing,as one of the main approaches of language output,plays an irreplaceable role in English learning.It serves as a vital and challenging fundamental language skill for students to synthesize and apply the knowledge.Though much time and effort has been devoted to improving Chinese students' writing competence in current teaching practice,writing teaching is,more often than not,a fruitless job.To break the deadlock,applying new ways of teaching writing is crucial if we want to obtain better results and improve students' writing skills.As a form of collaborative learning,peer feedback in second language writing teaching has been receiving increasing attention in the past two decades.Many of the studies,both home and broad,were conducted in universities or advanced EFL writing classes.Senior high schools,especially in China,were seldom involved in this kind of studies.Besides,peer comments being difficult to be produced by Chinese students due to their cultural behaviors and experience as well as unguaranteed feedback quality add the difficulty.Based on the Scaffolding Theory,the present study is meant to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of trained peer feedback in Chinese senior high schools' EFL writing classes.In specific,the following three research questions are proposed:(1)What are the students' perceptions and attitudes towards peer feedback?(2)What effects do peer feedback have on students' writing performance?(3)How does peer feedback affect students' evaluative ability?To resolve the research questions above,the researcher conducted an experiment among 89 Senior Two students from two science classes in a provincial four-star level high school.It lasted for eight weeks and involved the procedures such as grouping,taking the questionnaires,pre-test,peer feedback implementation,post-test and organizing interview.Statistics tools like SPSS 18.0 and Excel were also employed in the study for data collection and analysis.The major findings of the research are listed as follows:Firstly,students generally held positive attitudes towards peer feedback and they were willing to participate in various peer feedback activities.And they welcomed this approach in their future writing class after the study.As for students' attitudes towards peer feedback effects,the majority of students affirmed the benefits of peer feedback activities and they deemed that their writing quality was improved from various angles.However,they still showed a skeptical and reserved attitude to their peers' evaluative ability.Secondly,the results showed that students' writing scores got improved greatly after the study.In terms of writing complexity,accuracy and fluency,there was a significant improvement in students' writing accuracy,while the changes in the other two aspects were not obvious.Thirdly,students' evaluative ability was rather low before the implementation.During the feedback training,students had a further grasp of writing.The data showed that peer feedback helped students improve their evaluative ability to some extent during the whole study.In addition,the research also indicated that peer feedback could improve students'automaticity,cultivate students' critical thinking awareness,motivate their interest and alleviate writing anxiety.Therefore,it is suggested that English teachers should incorporate peer feedback into traditional English writing class.Through the organic combination of peer feedback and teacher feedback,more fruitful and effective results can be attained.