A Study Of The Effect Of Peer Feedback On Junior High School Students’ English Writing

Writing is an important aspect of English teaching as well as a means and method of language output for English learners.Since the 1970 s,process writing method has become popular,and feedback in writing teaching has become the focus of researchers’ attention.There are different categories of feedback in the writing teaching.For example,according to different providers of feedbacks,feedback can be divided into teacher feedback,peer feedback and self-feedback.However,most teachers still use the teacher feedback method in the teaching of second language writing.Due to many factors,peer feedback has not been widely used.Meanwhile,studies on peer feedback mainly focus on college students and high school students,and few studies have been conducted on junior middle school students,so the results of these studies may not be applicable to all different levels of second language learners.Therefore,this study intends to explore the influence of peer feedback on junior high school students’ English writing.This study aims to investigate the effects of peer feedback on students’ writing performance,writing self-efficacy and writing attitude.The research questions are listed as follows: 1)What are the effects of peer feedback on students’ self-efficacy in English writing? 2)What are the effects of peer feedback on English writing performance of junior high school students? 3)What are the changes of junior high school students’ attitude towards peer feedback before and after the experiment?The subjects of this study are 84 junior high school students of grade 8 from two classes in Suzhou,Jiangsu province.One of the classes is experimental class,and the other is the control class.There are 42 students in each class.The experimental class adopts the method of peer feedback in writing teaching,while the traditional teacher feedback method is adopted in the control class.The research instruments of questionnaire,teaching experiment,writing tests and interview are used,and the collected data are analyzed with SPSS 19.0.The results are as follows: 1)Peer feedback can significantly improve the students’ overall English writing self-efficacy,as well as the English writing task self-efficacy and English writing skill self-efficacy.2)Peer feedback can greatly improve students’ English writing performance.3)Students’ attitude towards peer feedback is greatly changed after the experiment.They gradually realize the positive function of peer feedback in writing.They also suppose it can be combined with teachers’ feedback.The results of this study indicate that peer feedback has a positive effect on junior high school students’ English writing self-efficacy and writing competence.Based on the findings,some suggestions for the application of peer feedback are offered.The training of peer feedback should be more specific and targeted.Teachers should help students realize the positive role of peer feedback and choose the more acceptable way of evaluation.