What Is the Influence of Peer Feedback and Author Response on Chinese University Students’ English Writing Performance?

Abstract

Enhancing writing pedagogy in university‐based courses for students of English as a foreign language has been a long‐term goal of educators and researchers. Most recent work, however, has relied on qualitative methodologies that limit our capacity to generalize findings. In this quantitative study, the authors adopted a quasi‐experimental control group design to investigate effects of peer feedback and author response on university students’ writing performance in a context of English as a foreign language. A total of 198 sophomores majoring in English took part in a 15‐week research study. The authors conducted a repeated‐measures analysis of covariance to examine the effects of a traditional teacher feedback instructional group compared with an experimental peer feedback group. Results showed that the peer feedback group showed a significantly greater writing performance gain than the traditional teacher feedback group. Furthermore, follow‐up analyses focusing on the experimental group that relied on a series of multiple regressions showed that both the quality of students’ feedback and the quality of their author responses were significant and stable predictors of students’ writing performance. Results also showed that the quality of students’ author responses had a slightly larger impact on writing performance than the quality of students’ feedback. This study provides clear evidence of the power of formative peer feedback as an approach to support learning that both empowers students and addresses widely cited problems that arise when the instructor is the only source of feedback in a writing course.

Assessing the effect of giving and receiving written corrective feedback on improving L2 writing accuracy: does giving and receiving feedback have fair mutual benefit?

“…Yet, there is still no conclusive evidence concerning the efficacy of specific feedback strategies in improving second language (L2) learners' writing accuracy. L2 researchers, to date, have investigated the effect of feedback on L2 learners' writing ability from different perspectives, including focused and unfocused feedback (e.g., Bitchener & Knoch, 2009;Nemati, Alavi, & Mohebbi, 2019), direct and indirect feedback (Karim & Endley, 2019;Kim & Bowles, 2019), the feedback medium (Zhang, 2020), L2 learners and teachers' perceptions, preferences, needs, and practices in writing tasks (Bahrouni & Tuzlukova, 2019;Motallebzadeh, Kondori, & Kazemi, 2020;Nemati, Alavi, Mohebbi, & Masjedlou, 2017;Raza, 2019), and the source of feedback, namely teacher and/or peer (Ferris, 1995;Hyland, 2000;Miao, Badger, & Zhen, 2006;Peterson & Portier, 2014;Zhang & McEneaney, 2020). These studies and their inconclusive and somehow contradictory findings have given rise to a great deal of discussion on the value of feedback in developing writing accuracy.…”

Exploring EFL Learners’ Comments on Web-Based Peer Feedback: Local and Global Revisions

“…The study's findings revealed that the students in the experimental group outperformed the students in the control group. Similarly, Zhang and McEneaney (2020) conducted a 15-week research study to analyse the differences between teacher feedback and peer feedback in writing among 198 major English students. The outcomes of the analyses showed that the peer feedback group demonstrated a significantly better writing performance improvement than the traditional teacher feedback group.…”

The effect of teacher’s presence in collaborative online writing on EFL writing skills, reading comprehension and learner autonomy

“…Being accustomed to tackling writing as a solitary task, students might find it somehow challenging to adopt a more "collaborative mindset" (Blau and Caspi, 2009, p.49). For example, they might be reluctant to change or revise other students" written products (Zhang, 2018). From another perspective, writers themselves might not be tolerant towards their peers" revision (Chen, 2014).…”

“…It was concluded also that online peer feedback is more influential than offline feedback, because it is easier for the teacher to refer to peers" comments and evaluate their impact on students" writing. Yet, Zhang (2018) proved that the quality of EFL students" feedback is not the only factor that matters in online peer revision. He proposed that the quality of writers" response to revision, or what is called (backfeedback), had a slightly larger impact than students" feedback.…”