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According to the literature, there is an extensive body of research on learners’ attitudes towards PA (Lin, 2018; Meletiadou, 2012, 2013). The affective benefit of peer review over teacher review in EFL writing has been typically rationalized in many studies since students prefer receiving multiple feedback rather than one-sided teacher comments wishing to gain more experience in writing and editing by reflecting on the written work of their peers (Gielen & De Wever, 2015).
Other studies report that learners clearly prefer to receive feedback from their teacher although they do appreciate and acknowledge their peers’ assistance (Zhao, 2014). In their study, Hovardas et al. (2014) implemented reciprocal online PA in their science course and reported that their 28 secondary school students’ overall feelings were positive, but some did question the quality of peer recommendations, the cynical tone of certain peer assessors and the doubtful sincerity of their classmates’ feedback. According to Ruegg (2015), learners opt for both peer and tutor feedback as they think it is equally important. Topping (2017) also indicated that students’ inspiration depends on learners’ intellectual involvement and achievement. From this point of view, researchers claim that learners using PA were more inspired as their writing performance was significantly better than that of learners relying on teacher assessment (TA) only (Cheng et al., 2015).
Hwang et al. (2014) report that their 167 participants, who were involved in a PA-based game development approach, thought that PA assisted them in assimilating new information more easily and encouraged involvement in the evaluation process. Learners showed high engagement and were interested in exploring PA techniques to enhance their writing skills. Moreover, PA increased their motivation since students were able to discuss their personal views and had a chance to identify similarities and differences with their peers’ drafts. The marks produced in terms of PA were more reliable as more people were involved in the procedure rather than only one individual, their teacher. Finally, lack of favouritism was also evident in the evaluation process.