Abstract
This mixed-method 14-week case study investigated the impact of peer feedback on Turkish English as a foreign language (EFL) prospective teachers' attitudes to and performance in a blended academic writing course in the tertiary setting. The peer feedback provision process involved online and face-to-face written peer feedback on weblogs, enhanced with a six-hour training phase for peer feedback. Weekly student journals, group feedback conferences, the end-of-the-semester survey, and the pre- and post-writing tests were used in the data collection. The qualitative data were analyzed through content analysis and the quantitative data via descriptive statistics and an independent paired sample t-test. The study indicated that the use of face-to-face and online peer feedback together was perceived as beneficial and effective by EFL pre-service teachers and that it led to a relatively successful performance in academic writing. It is suggested that participants unfamiliar with peer revision be provided with training and continuous scaffolding/guidance to ensure the effectiveness of the process.
TopIntroduction
Feedback has been acknowledged to play a significant role in instruction (Mory, 2004; Topping, 1998). In fact, as suggested by Hattie and Timperly (2007) and Driscoll (2000), it is stated to have a very powerful impact on learning. It informs the learners of their current state of learning or performance in their zone of proximal development, promoting the students’ capacity for self-regulating their own performance to achieve the goal set at the beginning of the learning process (Narciss, 2008, 2012; Nicol & Mcfarlane-Dick, 2006; Shute, 2008). Instructional feedback leads learners to confirm their existing knowledge and beliefs or to modify them. It is regarded as a formative assessment tool to ameliorate or facilitate learning (Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006). Meaningful, high quality and timely feedback is likely to foster learner engagement in the content as well as in the learning process (Higgins, Hartley & Skelton, 2002). Learners can obtain feedback from diverse sources, one of which is peer feedback.
Peer feedback has been considered a vital component of the first language (L1) and second/foreign language (L2) writing instruction (Alshuraida & Storch, 2019; Lei, 2017; Rollinson, 2005) owing to the widespread student-centered learning practices. It can be defined as a collaborative activity where learners are engaged in reading, criticizing, commenting, and providing feedback on each other’s writing to foster their writing competence through the provision of mutual scaffolding (Hu, 2005; Tsui & Ng, 2000; Zhu, 2001). Providing numerous affordances for enhancing L2 writing development, peer feedback is an area of growing interest for various scholars in L2 writing (Ferris, 2003; Hu, 2005; Lam, 2010; Min, 2016). In this study the terms peer feedback, peer response and peer revision were used interchangeably.
Peer feedback is closely associated with the process approach to writing (Zhang, 1995; Khalil, 2018), which is considered “an important developmental tool moving learners through multiple drafts towards the capability for effective self-expression” (Hyland & Hyland, 2006, p.83). A large number of scholars and educators concur with the learning affordances of classroom/face-to-face peer feedback in the English as a Second Language (ESL) and Englsih as a Foreign Language (EFL) context (Allen & Katayama, 2015; Amores, 1997; Kuyyogsuy, 2019; Min, 2005, 2006; Shrum & Glisan, 2005). However, it is also widely recognized that a multitude of factors are likely to affect the quality and the implementation of the face-to-face peer feedback process as well as its impact on learners (Ferris, 2006; Liu & Hansen, 2002; Nelson & Carson, 2006; Villamil & De Guerrero, 2006). The most significant issues regarding face-to-face feedback include the following: Learners’ unfamiliarity, the lack of learner confidence and motivation to provide feedback (Chen, 2016; Speck, 2000), learners’ lack of response to feedback from their peers (Cho & Schunn, 2007), and a feeling of discomfort and anxiety (Lu & Bol, 2007; Wu, Petit, & Chen, 2015).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Online Feedback: Asychronous or synchronous oral or written feedback provision in response to students’ oral or written work on a virtual platform such as weblogs and wikis in a delayed time frame.
Non-Revision-Oriented Feedback: Synchronous or asynchronous comments related to the establishment of a friendly learning enviroment and good classroom dynamics.
Face-to-Face Feedback: The provision of oral or written feedback in response to students’ oral or written work.
Local Concerns in Writing: Language-related issues in writing such as spelling, word choice, and grammatical accuracy.
Peer Feedback: A collaborative activity where learners provide one another information interactively by commenting on and critiquing each other's work in both written and oral formats during the writing process
Process Approach to Teaching Writing: A non-linear, exploratory, and a bottom-up pedagogical approach to teaching writing that involves a series of stages such as planning, drafting and revising.
Intra-Feedback: A procedure where students are initially engaged in writing individual comments and then form small groups to discuss the comments on the same written work in a collaborative fashion.
Global Concerns in Writing: Content-related issues in writing such as idea development, textual organization, coherence, unity, clarity of purpose and awareness of audience.