Peer Instruction’s Impact on EFL Writing Proficiency: A Quasi-experiment in a Chinese University

Abstract

This study investigated the impact of peer instruction on learners’ writing proficiency in a Chinese university. It adopted a quasi-experimental research design and lasted for fourteen weeks. Peer instruction was used as an intervention for the experimental group, while the teacher-centred traditional approach was employed for the control group. The quasi-experiment results showed no significant difference in the pretest writing proficiency between the experimental and control groups. However, the experimental group’s writing proficiency significantly exceeded the control group’s in the posttest. Therefore, the intervention was effective in this quasi-experiment, and peer instruction significantly influenced EFL learners’ writing proficiency. Nevertheless, this study also had the limitation of a small sample and short duration. In future studies, educators and teachers should reduce these limitations to optimize the peer instruction approach in EFL writing instruction.