The Positive Effects of Peer Response

Peer response is an activity that is often met with mixed reactions from native and second language (L2) writers alike.  The L2 writer, specifically, may have more trouble with peer response than her native writer counterpart due to a variety of reasons (e.g. cultural differences, lack of language knowledge or intuition, etc).  However, this does not mean that peer response should be avoided in an L2 composition course.  On the contrary, with the proper skill building, peer response has shown to be beneficial for L2 writers.  This post will detail the effects of peer response on L2 writing as well as the effects on L2 writers.  The distinction between writing and writers is made to highlight the dichotomy of peer response; that is, peer response has an influence over the quality of writing as well as an influence over the self-editing strategies of individual writers.  Lastly, the implications for teaching L2 composition will be discussed.

Peer Response and Writing

Under the proper circumstances (these to be addressed later in the discussion of implications for teaching), peer response has been shown to enhance the L2 writing process.  Min (2006) studied the effect of trained peer review and found that this was useful in improving overall writing.  It is important to place the emphasis on trained in trained peer review, as Min also compared how much peer feedback was incorporated into students’ revisions, and found that amount of peer feedback that was used in future revisions was far less before training (42%) than after (77%) (p. 128).  In addition, the peer feedback that was used in revisions helped to improve the quality of the paper approximately 72% of the time (p. 130).   This suggests that peer feedback can have a positive influence on the revision process and final product.

Lin and Chien (2009) studied the effectiveness of peer response and found that the ability to collaborate with fellow students increased their motivation and inspiration.  Such collaboration, especially at the beginning of the writing process, may not be quantifiable in terms of the number of comments on a paper, but rather help the student and his or her peer(s) to develop and strengthen their ideas and organization before they ever begin writing their first draft.

Both of these studies (Lin & Chien, 2009; Min, 2006) were done in an EFL environment. Yang et al (2006) also studied the effects of peer response in an EFL environment.  This is important to note, as in the Yang et al study, they were in particular focusing on whether peer feedback could be introduced into the classroom where the traditional school culture reveres teacher feedback and places little value on the feedback of peers.  They found that despite this reliance on teacher feedback in the Chinese EFL environment, peer response could still be instituted and be successful.  If this is possible for EFL environments where the dominant culture does not place importance on peer response, then it is likely that peer response could also be successfully introduced into the ESL environments where the dominant culture does place importance on peer response.  Indeed, Lundstrom and Baker (2009) conducted their study in an ESL environment, and although they studied whether giving or receiving feedback was better for writing, they found that when peer review was instituted, both givers and receivers made gains in their writing ability.  This shows that peer response can be used in EFL and ESL contexts, regardless of the students’ cultural orientation toward peer feedback.

 

Peer Response and Writers

Next, we turn to the effect of peer response on the development of L2 writers.  This is important to consider, as one of the main purposes of L2 composition, besides improving the quality of English writing, should be to develop self-sufficient writers.  That is, L2 students need to be able to write well in addition to having the capacity to edit and think critically about their own compositions.

Lundstrom and Baker (2009) found that when peer response was instituted in an ESL composition course, especially for students, regardless of their beginner or intermediate level status, who were in their first semester abroad, the students’ writing ability increased significantly when they were only required to give feedback, opposed to their fellow students who only received the feedback.  And although the students who gave feedback and those who received it both improved their writing skills, the students that gave feedback far outperformed their peers (Lundstrom & Baker, 2009).  If students who were required to give feedback to their peers significantly outperformed their peers in later writing abilities, this strongly suggests that something within the process of giving feedback enables students to think critically about writing, which is a skill they can then apply to their own writing.

Yang et al (2006) found that peer feedback, while not always incorporated into later drafts, promotes better self-editing skills.  So while students may not agree with the suggestions that their peer has given about their paper, what these students may not realize is that to accept or reject what a peer has suggested means that one must think critically about his paper, what he is trying to say, as well as how the proposed change would benefit or damage his meaning before making a decision on how to revise. This lack of realization about the benefits of peer response (i.e. the development of self-editing skills) may lead students to view peer response in a negative light (Yang et al, 2006).  However, not incorporating peer feedback into later revision does not always mean that this feedback was unhelpful.  Furthermore, the study (Yang et al, 2006) found that students who received only teacher feedback relied heavily on this, often times without questioning what the teacher wrote.  Even though the students who received peer feedback still preferred teacher feedback, they relied less on this, instead demonstrating more autonomous writing skills.

Implications for Teaching L2 Composition

In all of these studies, (Yang et al, 2006; Min 2006; Lundstrom & Baker, 2009; Lin & Chien, 2009) the students were trained in peer response.  Min (2006) in particular studied peer response and whether training was important.  Overwhelmingly, she found that trained peer response was necessary for the students.  Furthermore, she stressed that students need to be trained as well as held accountable for their feedback (Min, 2006).

A valid reason for training and holding students accountable for their feedback is brought up by the Yang et al (2006) study, which made a distinction between feedback that was usable and feedback that was not.  An example of usable feedback would be, “Your thesis statement should be located at the beginning of the paper instead of the end so that readers can easily identify your position,” as opposed to unusable feedback, an example of which would be, “Excellent and clear thesis statement!”  Let to their own devices, students are much more likely to leave comments similar to the latter, when this is not beneficial for either the feedback giver or receiver.

In addition, Lin and Chien (2009) found that after eight weeks of trained peer response, students believed that peer feedback was less traumatic than teacher feedback, and although they still preferred teacher feedback for learning, they also felt more comfortable with receiving peer feedback.  This is an interesting and somewhat conflicting finding, though perhaps it simply implies that peer feedback can only take students so far in their writing; using peer response in the L2 composition course is not a substitute for teacher feedback.  Rather, it should be used as a supplement to teacher feedback as well as promoting better writing and developing critical thinking and self-editing skills.

 

Conclusion

The negative views that many students hold regarding peer response should not discourage teachers from implementing peer response in their L2 composition courses.  With that said, teachers must also be sure to train and hold their students accountable for the feedback they give in order for the peer response process to be effective and positive for L2 students.  The writing of L2 students shows improvement after peer response has been instituted in the classroom.  Peer response has also shown to help students to become more effective in their self-editing skills.  After all, the goal for teachers of L2 composition courses, in addition to helping L2 students develop their writing skills in the target language, should be to develop autonomous writers who can function just as well on their own as they would in the classroom. 

References

Lin, G. H., & Chien, P. C. (2009). An Investigation into the Effectiveness of Peer Feedback. Journal of Applied Foreign Languages Fortune Institute of Technology , 3, 79-87.

Lundstrom, K., & Baker, W. (2009). To give is better than to receive: The benefits of peer review to the reviewer’s own writing. Journal of Second Language Writing (18), 30-43.

Min, H.-T. (2006). The effectiveness of trained peer review on EFL students’ revision types and writing quality. Journal of Second Language Writing (15), 118-141.

Yang, M., Badger, R., & Yu, Z. (2006). A comparative study of peer and teacher feedback in a Chinese EFL writing class. Journal of Second Language Writing (15), 179-200.

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