Examining the Effects of Peer Review in EFL Writing: A Coh-Metrix Analysis

Abstract

This study investigated the effectiveness of peer feedback in EFL writing classes. A total of 285 original editorials by 103 Korean learners of English were compared with revised drafts reviewed by classmates. Coh-Metrix, an automated tool offering a wide range of measures on cohesion and language was used for analyses. Fourteen indices of the Coh-Metrix system were selected to observe variances in lexical (i.e., TTR, frequency, age of acquisition, concreteness, familiarity, meaningfulness, polysemy), syntactic (i.e., number of words before the main verb, NP/VP density), and discourse (i.e., argument/content word overlap, LSA) aspects between the two sets of writings. There were significant improvements in the lexical aspect as positive modifications were noted in revised drafts. In addition, selective enhancements were observed in the syntactic aspect. Although the number of words before the main verb increased in the revised drafts, NP/VP density resulted in no difference between the two corpora. For the discourse aspect, no significant difference was found. Overall, the implementation of peer review led to positive outcomes in specific areas. However, results also revealed overt limitations of the practice in EFL settings. These findings suggest some educational implications in EFL writing pedagogy.