Abstract
This study examines the distribution of peer review in face-to-face and mobile-mediated peer review groups and their effects on students’ revision skills and academic writing development. Seventy-two first-year English for academic purposes (EAP) students participated in an 18-session IELTS academic writing course in a Canadian university the mobile-mediated peer review group (MMPR) used Telegram to exchange peer comments synchronously, while the face-to-face peer review group (FFPR) did peer review in the classroom. An adapted analytic scheme (Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2, 193–227, 2003) and the IELTS academic writing assessment criteria were used to conceptualize the peer comments in terms of frequency, area, type, nature, and IELTS assessment categories. Results indicated that the total number of comments, the percentage of revision-oriented comments and actual revisions made by the MMPR group were statistically more significant than those by the FFPR group. Furthermore, the MMPR group made more local revision-oriented comments than that of FFPR. However, the revision-oriented suggestion in local areas was the most distributed type of comment made by both groups. Regarding the IELTS assessment criteria, the FFPR group made more comments on task achievement and coherence and cohesion, whereas the comments made by the MMPR group targeted more lexical resources, and grammatical range and accuracy. In addition, the results showed that both MMPR and FFPR groups developed their IELTS academic writing skills while the MMPR mode of collaboration outperformed the FFPR.
Highlights
Peer review is a collaboration between students to provide constructive comments on each other’s oral and written output with the goal of development (Jurkowski, 2018; Liu & Hansen, 2005)
Do the mobile-mediated peer review group (MMPR) and face-to-face peer review group (FFPR) commenting modes result in a different distribution of peer comments in terms of the frequency, area, type, nature, and the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) assessment criteria? RQ2
Overall, the findings of this study revealed that the total number of comments, the percentage of revision-oriented comments, and the percentage of actual revisions made by MMPR students were larger than FFPR students
Summary
Peer review is a collaboration between students to provide constructive comments on each other’s oral and written output with the goal of development (Jurkowski, 2018; Liu & Hansen, 2005). This is more obvious in International English Language Testing System (IELTS) preparation courses, where most candidates might show uncertainty towards their peers’ comments and consider them unreliable or invalid due to the nature of this international test Another concern in peer review research is if learners can utilize the peers’ comments and make revisions on their writing as some researchers take the positive (Lam, 2010; Min, 2006; Pham & Usaha, 2015; Shang, 2017) and some (Guardado & Shi, 2007; Liu & Sadler, 2003; Saito & Fujita, 2004) doubtful standpoint towards that. Negotiation is the key factor in this theory that assists L2 development by creating a more comprehensible input, drawing students’ attention to their linguistic problems and errors, and highlighting the negative evidence (Gass, 2003)
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