Japanese Learners' Self Revisions and Peer Revisions of Their Written Compositions in English

Abstract

The current study examined 24 Japanese university students' processes of negotiation in conditions of self revision and of peer revision about their English as a foreign language (EFL) writing. Analyzing their negotiation episodes and text changes, I categorized within a common coding scheme the types of negotiation from (a) think‐aloud protocols of participants' self revisions, (b) transcriptions of their discussions during peer revisions, and (c) changes students made to their written texts in both conditions of revising. Other data included stimulated recall interviews with individual students. More episodes of negotiation appeared during peer revisions (682 episodes) than during self revisions (522 episodes), but approximately twice as many text changes occurred during participants' self revisions (287 text changes) as occurred during their peer revisions (166 text changes). Peer revisions had more metatalk than self revisions. Self revision tended to involve brief solitary searches for word choices or self‐corrections of grammar based on individual memory searches or repetitions. Several pedagogical suggestions for second language (L2) learning and writing arise from these results.