Exploring the dynamics of student engagement with receiving peer feedback in L2 writing

Abstract

Although research on student engagement with peer feedback in second and foreign language (L2) writing has attracted some attention in recent years, there has been little emphasis on the dynamic changes in and factors influencing student engagement. Drawing on multiple data sources, we explored how six undergraduate students affectively, cognitively, and behaviorally engaged with receiving peer feedback across three writing cycles in an online TOEFL writing course. The findings revealed that L2 students’ engagement with peer feedback was complex, dynamic, and nonlinear. Affectively, the students experienced fluctuating emotions across tasks, which directly contributed to changes in their behaviors, as positive emotions promoted feedback implementation, while negative emotions hampered it. Cognitively, the students showed dynamic difficulties in understanding peer feedback across tasks, which triggered negative emotions and inappropriate revisions, and noticing/understanding feedback did not guarantee the use of cognitive strategies. Behaviorally, the students manifested different trends of implementing peer feedback and deployed a variety of observable revision strategies across the three writing cycles. Overall, the dynamics of student engagement with receiving peer feedback were found to be influenced by a number of individual and contextual factors, indicating the malleability of L2 students’ engagement with peer feedback.