Training Foreign Language Learners to be Peer Responders: A Multiliteracies Approach

Abstract

This study proposes a method for implementing trained peer response within the multiliteracies framework and then qualitatively examines its effectiveness. Three factors are considered: (1) the extent to which peer response training engaged learners in all four knowledge processes; (2) the quality of peerto-peer feedback; and (3) students' attitudes about peer response. Findings suggest that collaborative genre analysis moves students through various knowledge processes and equips them to apply literacybased understandings, knowledge, and skills during peer response. In general, students provided constructive, actionable comments to their peers and reported numerous benefits of both giving and receiving peer feedback. Implications for future research and practice will be of interest to instructors who want to implement peer response as well as curriculum designers who are building literacy-oriented language programs.

Education for Sustainable Development in Foreign Language Learning

“…Meaning makers do not simply use what they have been given: they are fully makers and remakers of signs and transformers of meaning. (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 175) Students drafted their petitions and then completed a peer review activity that framed writing in this way-as a dynamic, purposeful, and context-bound act of meaning design (Turpin, 2019). As the instructor, I also commented on each rough draft, intentionally focusing my feedback on the meaning-making choices that helped or hindered students' ability "to exercise [their] agency with an identity that is recognized by others in the community" (Swaffar & Arens, 2005, p. 2) and persuade their intended audience.…”

Literacy en français and à la française: Socializing students to academic literacy practices in a foreign language

“…A Multiliteracy approach to FL instruction has the potential to sensitize students to FL‐specific genres as new Available Designs. Turpin (2019) recognized that instructors of Spanish as a FL could employ a Multiliteracies Pedagogy “to teach their students to write according to the academic conventions of a university in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, or Madrid” (p. 55). She suggested that the comparison of “models of academic essays from the U.S. and other Spanish‐speaking countries could highlight the culturally‐situated nature of textual conventions and prepare students to meet the academic requirements of study abroad” (p. 55).…”

Peer Feedback In Language Teacher Training: Students’ Pedagogic Approaches and Interpersonal Positioning

“…Recent studies have focused more frequently on students' interpersonal relationships during peer feedback activities, including power negotiations and students' attitudes towards peer feedback (e.g., Turpin, 2019;Zhao, 2018). The current paper aims to further contribute to this trend by exploring responder/respondee positioning during peer feedback activities from two perspectives: it both investigates student responders' pedagogic approaches to peer feedback and demonstrates how their positioning of themselves relative to the respondee (the feedback recipient) is reflected in their critiques.…”