Ｔｈｅ Ｉｍｐｌｉｃａｔｉｏｎ ｏｆ Ｐｅｅｒ Ｆｅｅｄｂａｃｋ ｔｏ Ｃｏｌｌｅｇｅ Ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ Ｔｅａｃｈｉｎｇ

郝家荣　张　宏

Abstract:With the increasing number of college students enrollment, non-English major students have paid much attention to error correction and peer feedback on writing. This article sheds some light on the benefits and implication of peer feedback on college English teaching.

Key words:peer feedback ZPD college English writing

Ⅰ.Introduction

Writing,as one of the four major language skills,has been playing the same important role in Chinas English as a second language classroom as the other three ones.Both teachers and students spend a lot of time and efforts on it in high school as well as in advanced education because all public English examinations in China include writing as one of the important items.However,“writing is a language skill which is difficult to acquire”(Tribble,1 996:3).Teachers have been trying different ways to improve studentswriting skills and ability.Peer feedback is viewed as one of the effective ways experimented in foreign language writing classroom.But how to carry out the activities remains various.

Ⅱ.Literature Review

A review of the 1iterature on error feedback reveals two major study areas:teachers correction(Hyland.1990;Makino,1993;Dheram,1995;Perpignan,2003)and peer editing(Keh,1990;Mangelsdorf,1992;Storch,1998;DeGuerrero& Villamil,2000).The former, however, is often criticized as being “unspecific,incomprehensible,contradictory,inconsistent,inaccurate,meaningless to the student,vague,over-general,abstract, formulaic and idiosyncratic” (Zamel,1 985,cited in Rollinson,2005).Robb et al (ibid,cited in Dheram)found that detailed feedback on surface errors was not more accurate than 1ess detailed feedback on their respondentswork.They also observed that “improvement was independent of type of feedback” (ibid:93).Fathman and Whalley(1990,cited in Dheram)found that 1earnersgrammatical competence only improved when they received specific feedback on their grammar.Perpignan (2003)draws the disconcerting conclusion that teacherserror feedback serves no useful purpose in the students learning improvement because of the 1ack of understanding between teachers and students.The latter is becoming more and more popular nowadays as it “operates on a more informal 1eve1 than teacher response,provides a change from the more one—way interaction between the teacher and student” (Rollinson,2005),thus may encourage or motivate writers and promote their understanding of the feedback.Meanwhile it may save the teachers from a tedious and unrewarding chore. Storch(1998)conducts a classroom-based study to provide descriptive accounts of students' engagement in a collaborative text reconstruction task which pushes learners not only to produce meaningful text but also pay attention to grammatical accuracy, with the purpose of investigating which type of grammatical items is of the students most concern,and finding how students use the reasoning to arrive at grammatical decisions.De Guerero and Villamil(2000)adopt the theory of ZPD(zone of proximal development) and a micro genetic approach to observe the mechanisms by which strategies of revision take shape and develop in the inter psychological space created when two learners are working in their respective ZPDs,with the conclusion that it is a reciprocal process for both readers and writers.All these studies show peer revision is a beneficial learning process.

Ⅲ.Benefits of doing peer feedback

Generally speaking, peer feedback can provide useful feedback. Both Rollinson(1998)and Caulk(1994) found from their experiences that their students considered over 80%percents of the peer comments were valid and useful and peer writers can and do revise effectively on the basis of comments from peer readers.Chaulk(1994)also pointed out that teacher feedback was rather general,whereas student responses were more specific.

Cognitively speaking,peer response activities in teaching foreign language writing can force foreign language students to exercise their thinking as opposed to passively receive information from the teacher(Mittan,1989).In peer response,students can engage in unrehearsed,low risk, exploratory talk that is less feasible in whole—class and teacher-student interactions and take an active role in their learning,thus to reconceptualize their ideas in light of their peers reaction while responding to peers writing can build the critical skills needed to analyze and revise ones own writing(Leki,1990).Moreover, the suggestions an explanation offered during the peer response activities allow students to show what they know about writing and to use that information in their revisions and the act that writers revise their essays based on their peers comments suggests that students in peer response activities have developed the crucial ability of reviewing their writing with the eye of another (Zamel,1982:206).

In terms of linguistic benefits,students experience through collaborative group production valuable opportunities to improve their ability to read and write because the ongoing community orientation of this approach enables them to draw on the strengths and resources of their peers while sorting through their own growing knowledge of foreign language writing.They also have a chance to explore the target language as they respond to their peers drafts and discuss such issues as appropriate word choice and grammatical structures.Peer interaction can help foreign language students communicate their ideas and enhance the development of foreign language learning in general. In sum, peer response activities give students more ways to discover and explore ideas, to find the right words to express their ideas,and to negotiate with their readers about their ideas.

In respect of social benefits, peer feedback can enhance students' communicative power by encouraging students to express and negotiate their ideas. Peer response activities help students gain confidence and reduce apprehension by allowing them to see peers' strengths and weaknesses in writing. Sharing individual strengths and weaknesses in the group encourages connectivity in the learning community(Saito & Fujita,2004). They may also open up new avenues for friendship through students collaboration.

In al1, the advantages of doing peer feedback in foreign language writing class lie all in one side of studentsbenefits which mean to practice and improve students different ability.This is, however, the right purpose that all teachers have been working towards.

Ⅳ.Demerits of peer feedback

At the same time there are four reservations in doing peer feedback in foreign language writing class,according to Liu(1998):uncertainty concerning peers comments,lack of learner investment,superficial comments due to time constraints,and inappropriate interactions in commenting on peers drafts.

Zhang(1 995)indicates that sometimes the participants lack trust in the accuracy,sincerity, and specificity of the comments of their peers “with students being overly critical of each other s writings” Nelson& Murphy, 1992).Research has also identified a number of biases associated with peer assessment such as friendship bias and collusive bias(Saito & Fujita,2004).

As indicated above, all the constraints involved are about students feelings and group dynamics,which could probably be overcome by appropriate adjustment and operation during peer feedback activities.It can help to raise teachers awareness in the peer feedback activities,Therefore,a conclusion can be made that peer feedback in foreign language writing classroom is worth doing.

Ⅴ.Implication of peer feedback to English Writing class

Since there are much more benefits for students in doing peer feedback than constraints,many teachers and researchers have done some experiments and studies on how to use it properly.They draw up some theories as well as working out the procedure and steps on how to do peer feedback.Those steps are quite similar although they have their own focus according to their different needs.Here are some ideas。

According to Saito and Fujita(2004),to go through the peer feedback procedure,it needs three steps :training by modeling—telling the major items to comment— making comments,each of which is equally important to the success of the activity.

Sargent(1997)goes through “training by modeling,including showing major items to comment—grouping—commenting and monitoring—teachers reflecting”, two more steps than those from Saito And Fujita.

Hansen and Liu(2004)declare that to do effective peer feedback needs more stages than people usually think about it,including “before peer response” which includes 13 steps, “ during peer response” and “after peer response”.

Having the same ideas as Saito,Fujita and Sargent shown above,Liu and Hansen(2004)also help students to focus on the contents first in their peer feedback activities,then the organization and finally grammar.They “create purposeful and appropriate peer response sheets for a given task”(Hansen and Liu,2004:34)and ask the students to develop their own one.They all monitor the activities and offer help if necessary.

In sum,peer feedback activities usually includes three main parts:pre-peer feedback,while-peer feedback and post-peer feedback although different people have different ideas on the procedure of peer feedback and different contexts require different focuses on certain steps.Teachers should adapt it according to their own contexts and their own purposes while utilizing it to college English writing class.

References:

[1]De Guerero and Villamil. Activating the ZPD: Mutual Scaffolding in Peer Revision[J].Modern Language Journal, 2000.84.

[2]Dheram,P K. Feedback as a Two-bullock Cart: A Case Study of Teaching Writing[J].ELT Journal,1995,49(2): 8-160.

[3]Tribble.C.Writing.Oxford:Oxford University Press,1996.

[4]Rollinson.Peer Response and Revision in an Writing Group:A Case Study.Unpublished PhD Thesis.Universidad Antonoma de Madrid,1998.

[5]Rollinson.P.Using Peer Feedback in the ESL Writing Class.ELT Journa1.2004,(59):23-30.

[6]Saito,H.& Fujita,Characteristics and User Acceptance of Rating in editing Classrooms.Language Teaching Research,2004,(8):3l-54.

[7]Sargent.M.E.Peer Response to Stakes Writing in a WAC Literature Classroom.In Write to Learn:Strategies for Assigning and Responding to Writing Across the Disciplines.ed Soreinelli,M.D.and E Elbow.San Francisco:Jossey-Bass Publishers,1997,(69).

[8]Zamel,V.Writing.Process of Discovering Meaning.TESOL Quarterly.1982,(16):l95-209.

[9]Zhang S Re-examining the Effective Advantage of Peer Feedback in the ESL writing Class.Journal of Second Language Writing,1995,(4):209-222.

[10]Chaulk.N.Comparing Teacher and Student Response to Written.TESOL Quarterly,1994,(28):l8l-l88

[11]Keh, C.L. Providing Productive Feedback[J]. ELT Journal,1990,44(4):294-304.