Although learning paradigm has shifted from teacher-centered to student-centered for more than a decade, where students are encouraged to be left independent and able to learn writing collaboratively, the teaching and learning in the EFL writing context still poses many problems. The problems can be students' lack of proper understanding of the writing skill; language knowledge limitation; ambiguity of feedback; and low self-efficacy for writing. These are factors that affect how students perform in their writing as well as on their ability to think critically. This study aimed to explore students' attitudes toward the implementation of the self-monitoring and peer feedback strategies in the EFL essay writing class using a four-point Likert scale attitude questionnaire and semi-structured interview as instruments. Participants were 30 mixed-ability third-year undergraduate students majoring in English for International Communication at a university in the northeastern region of Thailand. Findings revealed that students had positive attitudes toward these two strategies, stating that it helped them to learn via social process and to gradually develop their critical thinking skills. This paper, based on the data, concluded that challenges in implementing the self-monitoring and peer feedback strategies in the writing class where the majority of students were in the low-intermediate level due to lack of proper understanding of the characteristics of the writing skill and of learning how to write; due to possible low self-efficacy for writing and collaborating with peers due to their limitation of language knowledge.
Although teacher and peer feedback is essential in aiding students to progress in their writing skills and is encouraged in any writing class, some classroom circumstances may act to limit the feedback teachers and peers give or may make giving feedback impossible. Conditions that may limit feedback can include heavy teaching loads of teachers, large class sizes, insufficient language knowledge of peers, and cultural limits such as fear of causing loss-of-face or having a "kreng jai" attitude (fear of offending others). Taken together, these factors hinder straightforward feedback from both teachers and peers, impacting growth in student writing skills. This study aimed at finding out students' needs towards teacher and peer feedback in an English Writing for Daily Life course. Research instruments utilized were a four-point Likert scale questionnaire and semi-structured interview. Participants were 119 mixed-ability third and fourth-year undergraduate students majoring in Business Administration (Management), Accounting, and Mechanical Engineering at a university in the northeastern region of Thailand. Findings revealed that the majority of students had problems with content (59.66%), vocabulary (53.78%), and organization (50.42%). Although these three aspects were their major problems in English writing, teachers emphasized giving feedback on mechanics (54.62%), language use (50.42%), and organization (48.74%), while peers gave feedback more on surface-level features, i.e., vocabulary (44.54%) and language use (41.18%), despite their limitation of language knowledge. Based on the findings, this paper concluded that there was a mismatch between students' needs and feedback given by teachers and peers, where students needed sufficient feedback to improve their deep-level features, i.e., content and organization. Although students needed to receive more feedback to improve their content and organization, they also needed feedback on vocabulary, language use, and mechanics to improve the quality of their writing. Therefore, it is suggested that teachers give feedback focused on syntax to help students in terms of their language limitation, whereas peers should be trained to give feedback on content and organization to develop their critiquing skills.
"The teaching and learning of English speaking has recently posed several challenges due to the coronavirus pandemic. One of the challenges is that it is nearly impossible to conduct the teaching and learning in the physical classroom, affecting how students are given immediate feedback to. Teachers have to find different methods and techniques to use in their speaking classes during this situation, for example, giving live virtual presentations, pre-recording video clips and uploading them to online classrooms, giving online comments and feedback, and so on. In this mixed-methods study, the purposes were to investigate the effects of giving asynchronous online peer and teacher feedback to students after they had uploaded their three types of speech video clips, i.e., informative, persuasive, and entertaining, to the Google Classroom and to explore the students’ attitudes toward the two types of feedback. Participants were 25 fourth-year undergraduate students, majoring in English for International Communication at a university in northeastern region of Thailand. It was found that although the second speech video clip scores were higher than the first speech video clip scores, students still had difficulties in providing sufficient and specific peer feedback on the areas of organization and research citations, impacting growth in their speaking skills. Moreover, findings from the semi-structured interviews revealed that students viewed the two types of feedback positively. It helped them to gradually develop thinking and critiquing skills, and they also demonstrated increased confidence in speaking after they had received both types of feedback. This study proposes opportunities for discussion, i.e., providing sufficient peer feedback training and meaningful writing assignments, to hone students critiquing skills, especially on the areas of organization and research citations."
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