Complementarity of Peer and Teacher Feedback in Korean High School English Classes

Abstract

Cho, Yunkyoung & Sohn, Taeho. (2007). Complementarity of peer and teacher feedback in Korean high school English classes. English Teaching, 62(3), 307-329. The present study is interested in examining the issue of complementarity of peer feedback and teacher feedback as employed in Korean secondary English classes. Specifically, the complementarity of the two feedback sources was examined in three respects: the nature of feedback, the incorporation of feedback into revision, and the effects of feedback on the improvement of the revised drafts. The overall findings seem to support the complementarity of the two types of feedback. First, teacher feedback was predominantly concerned with the surface level of writing, while some of the peer feedback concerned content and organization. Second, almost all of the teacher feedback was accepted or adapted in revision, while the students in the peer feedback group were selective in choosing which peer feedback to use in revisions. Lastly, the quality of the second drafts of the two groups did not significantly differ, and both the teacher and peer feedback were found to be effective in promoting revisions. Despite a few methodological limitations, these findings indicate that Korean EFL secondary learners could benefit from peer feedback in different ways from teacher feedback.