A Study On The Effects Of Peer Feedback Strategy Training On High School English Learner Engagement

Studies in second language acquisition has revealed that learners’ second language development is interactively triggered,and meaning negotiation induced by natural communication breakdowns requires interactive feedback between or among participants.In the context of promoting the “student-centered” education philosophy and large classroom teaching,interactive feedback among students has become an important part of second language classroom instruction.However,the effectiveness of peer feedback is influenced by learners’ perceptions and performance of peer feedback,as well as learners’ affective and relational stances,and these qualities are not innate.Research has found that feedback training can empower learners with certain feedback literacy and better facilitate the collaborative learning among learners.Focusing on high school English teaching in China,there is a lack of Chinese-context-situated empirical research on the multidimensional effects of peer feedback strategy training on the learning engagement of high school English learners.In this study,50 second-year students in an intact class from a provincial model high school in Fuyang City were recruited as the participants.Using classroom observations,questionnaires,and semi-structured interviews,this study explored the effects of peer feedback strategy training on high school English learners’ behavioral engagement,emotional engagement,and social engagement in an interactive classroom context through a quasi-experimental research design of pre-test,post-test(immediately after two weeks peer feedback strategy training),and delayed post-test(one month after the peer feedback strategy training)from the perspective of learner engagement.This study tried to answer the following three questions:(1)What is the effect of peer feedback strategy training on high school English learners’ behavioral engagement?(2)What is the effect of peer feedback strategy training on high school English learners’ social engagement?(3)What is the effect of peer feedback strategy training on high school English learners’ emotional engagement?The results of statistical analysis showed that there were statistically significant differences between the end of the peer feedback strategy training and the beginning of the training in terms of the time that students spent on completing the task,the number of words and the number of turns produced in the interaction;although there was little change in students’ cooperation in completing sentences after the training,there was a significant increase in the number of feedback utterance generated after the training;in the dimension of students’ emotional engagement,there was no significant difference between the different experimental stages,but the interview data indicated that learners’ emotional engagement remained high in all three tasks.The results of this study are as follows.First,peer feedback strategy training has a positive effect on high school students’ behavioral and social engagement.Second,the training not only significantly promotes students’ discourse output but also increases the frequency of peer interaction,and the above effects are long-lasting.Third,high school students have a strong interest in viewpoint-based interactive tasks and hold a high level of emotional engagement.The findings of this study provide the following three insights for teaching English in high schools.First,taking into account of the current status of students’ feedback literacy,can provide training on scientifically optimized peer feedback strategies to facilitate peer-to-peer communication and interaction,thus,to increase students’ engagement in learning.In addition,a positive and relaxed learning atmosphere is encouraged in class,so as to help students make full use of peer interaction opportunities to strengthen social connections and bring into play the positive effect of social factors on learners’ engagement.What’s more,oral communication activities can be held regularly to enrich students’ English learning,allowing them to enhance their emotions and improve their language development together through peer interaction.