Abstract
Abstract Peer assessment and peer feedback are considered alternatives to teacher-based feedback and their effects on writing have been substantially researched. This study aims to examine the perspectives of a group of university students, who are mainly second language learners, on peer feedback in an English writing class. Many of the studies conducted on the perspectives of students regarding peer feedback provided conflicting findings. While some found that peer feedback was viewed with doubt and encouraged little revision, others found it helped learners to recognise their strengths and flaws in writing. This study aims to better understand students’ perspectives regarding peer feedback and to identify the concerns raised by students involved in the study. The findings from this study revealed that the participants of the study had a positive perspective on the use of peer feedback and on the use of an online peer feedback tool. The study also showed that past experience did not contribute towards a negative perspective of peer feedback among the participants. The findings from this study are useful for future research in designing a better peer feedback process and improve its implementation.
Highlights
The use of peer assessment and peer feedback in English writing classrooms has been widely supported by many researches as a learning tool that holds a variety of benefits
The responses given by the participants in the open-ended question section reiterated this as 81% of participants gave a positive response towards the question “What did you feel when you had to assess and provide feedback to your peers?” The response most often cited was that it gave students the opportunity to find different writing ideas (27%) and that students were able to learn from their peers (27%)
These positive responses corresponded with the mean obtained from items 1 and 3 (Table 1) of the questionnaire which asked if the students felt that peer feedback helped improve their writing and whether peer feedback enabled them to learn from their peers
Summary
The use of peer assessment and peer feedback in English writing classrooms has been widely supported by many researches as a learning tool that holds a variety of benefits. The majority of the literature concerning peer feedback in English classrooms are focused on first-language learners (L1). A small number of research had studied the use of peer feedback in an English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom or among second-language learners (L2) of English. In the case of L1 writing, studies showed that peer feedback was as effective as teacher comments whereas studies on L2 writing revealed that students mainly had doubts regarding the value of peer feedback (Zhang, 1995; Cheng & Warren, 1997). On the other hand, Chaudron (1984) conducted an attitude survey and found that students had a more positive attitude if feedback was received from native speakers, suggesting that “foreign students are cautious about the value of peer feedback as a source of aid in revising their writing” (p.10). Smith, Cooper & Lancaster (2002) in their research on peer feedback in a L2 classroom highlighted that students expressed a higher level of confidence in the peer feedback process over time and continual experience, there still remained within them an ‘‘unease about fairness and consistency regarding peer feedback’’ (p. 76)
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