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

Writing is an essential skill that English learners must acquire.English writing has long been highly valued by teachers and students during education and teaching,and it occupies an important proportion in English study.Peer feedback refers to the stage of writing revision in which students critique each other’s writing in groups and correct it according to their peers’ suggestions or comments.It helps to develop students’ cooperative learning ability,stimulate their writing potential,and urge them to participate more actively in the writing process.However,in the current English writing classroom,teacher is often the only source from which students could get feedback.Moreover,most studies on peer feedback have focused on college students,and the number of studies on peer feedback in middle and high school students is comparatively small.Therefore,this study attempts to explore the impact of peer feedback on middle school students’ English writing.This study,through a 15-week teaching experiment,intends to analyze the English composition scores and content of 80 students in two parallel classes of ninth grade.The data were collected through questionnaire,test,and interview.Teacher feedback was used in the control class and peer feedback was used in the experimental class.Students in the experimental class received instruction and training on peer feedback before the experiment,and gave feedback on the structure,content,and language of their peers’ work with the help of a peer feedback scale during the experiment.The study is aimed to answer the following two questions: 1.Does peer feedback have an effect on junior high school students’ English writing skills? 2.What are the attitudes of students at different levels toward peer feedback?The results of the study show that:(1)Peer feedback affects junior high school students English writing ability in terms of text content,language expression,and chapter structure.Specifically,students improved significantly in text content and language expression,but not in chapter structure.There were differences in the effects of peer feedback on students in the high,middle,and low levels.In terms of writing as a whole,students in the low level band showed most significant improvement,followed by those in the middle level band and the least in the high level band;(2)After 15 weeks of teaching,the vast majority of students had positive attitudes toward peer feedback.Among them,students in the low level indicated most positive attitude about peer feedback,followed by the high level and middle level students.In the peer feedback process,students are both writers and readers.This cultivates their sense of audience,motivates them to revise and reflect on their writing,and enhances their self-correction ability and critical thinking.Through this study,the researcher suggests that teachers should try to combine teacher guidance with peer feedback in future junior high school English writing instruction to change the current passive feedback mode of students and improve teaching efficiency.