Cultural issues in peer response: Revisiting “culture”

Abstract

Revision is widely understood to be the key to effective writing, but the quality of the revision depends crucially on the quality of the feedback that the writer receives, whether from self, peers, tutors in a writing center, or a writing instructor. In writing classrooms, a frequent source of feedback is peer response groups, a pedagogical technique that originated in L1 writing and was subsequently adopted in L2 classrooms. Given the differences between L1 and L2 writing, researchers and L2 teachers were eager to know if peer response was as effective in L2 settings as it was in L1 contexts. Although many of the research studies on peer response indicate mixed results, researchers have concluded, after two decades of examining the issue, that peer response can be beneficial for L2 writers under certain conditions (Ferris, 2003; Hyland, 2003; Liu & Hansen, 2002). In this chapter we will consider factors that contribute to effective peer response, with a focus on the role that culture may play in peer group interaction. Based on the review of literature and our own research, we suggest the possibility that students with a common language and cultural expectations tend to have more successful peer response interactions than students in heterogeneous cultural groupings. Because our previous work on this topic (Carson & Nelson, 1994, 1996; Nelson & Carson, 1995, 1998) has elicited some negative reaction, we will address both this criticism and the difficulty in talking about culture at all.