The Correlation Study Of Peer Feedback And English Writing Abilities Of Junior High School Students

Writing is regarded as one of the most important skills in junior high schools.Nowadays,English Subject Key Competencies and the new National English Curriculum bring new challenges and requirements to the junior high school writing classrooms.And there is an increasing need for a student-centered assessment system involving formative and summative assessment in writing.However,students’ writing abilities fail to meet the requirements as a result of the traditional “students writing and the teacher correcting” pattern which is product-oriented and teacher-centered.To explore the possible way to improve students’ writing abilities,many researchers and practitioners turn to peer feedback.This empirical research is designed to seek answers to the question “What’s the correlation between peer feedback and English writing abilities of junior high school students?” Therefore,this study will explore the following two questions:1.What specific aspects of writing abilities will be improved after peer feedback sessions?2.How does peer feedback affect the junior high school students’ writing abilities? And to what extent?As an empirical study,this research was conducted in a key junior high school from Zhejiang Province,and 12 students(6 pairs)from two classes were selected as target experiment participants conducting peer feedback sessions.The research lasted for nearly 10 weeks,and the data collected included texts written in the pretest,posttest and during the four peer feedback sessions,peer written comments and peer dyads talks.Furthermore,questionnaire and classroom observation were also carried out with the participants to gain their perceptions on their peer feedback experience.Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect and analyze multiple sources.There are three major findings in this research which can be summarized as follows.First and foremost,peer feedback is proved positive in improving writing abilities of students at the junior high school level.Furthermore,significant improvement is found in “grammar”,“relevance” and “punctuation” among the seven different aspects.Secondly,as two important peer feedback activities,peer written comment and peer dyads talk help shape students’ writing abilities by developing students’ critical thinking,cooperative learning and self-reflection as well as creating a secure learning community.But they play limited roles and have constraints since the students are not able to offer more valuable feedback resulting in better revisions and improvement.Peer feedback should complement teacher feedback and self-feedback as a useful strategy in writing instruction.Thirdly,most of the students hold a positive attitude to peer feedback experience in spite of some reservations.In the end,some pedagogical implications and suggestions are put forward.Considering the positive effect of peer feedback on the junior high school students’ writing abilities,teachers are suggested to use peer feedback as one important feedback in Chinese junior high school classrooms.Peer feedback is advised to be integrated with teacher feedback according to different teaching situations and students’ needs in the regular writing instruction.What’s more,a combined first written then oral feedback mode is proved effective in this research and it is suggested to utilize this mode for better improving in writing abilities.Thirdly,teachers should prepare well to conduct adequate peer training and design the proper peer feedback sheets to scaffold the peer feedback sessions in the classrooms.Fourthly,peer feedback can hardly succeed if learners feel reluctant and uncomfortable in learning.Teachers should try their best to make peer feedback as comfortable and secure as possible.