2.4 Common Elements
2.4.1 Feedback (Peer Review and Teacher’s Feedback)…
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Lomicka, 2008; Ward, 2004) also reported that students, either as blog readers or blog writers, gained benefits from blogging. Lee’s (2006) case study suggested that social network and online community were very helpful for students who were learning Korean. Many other studies (Armstrong & Retterer, 2008; Horvath, 2009; Miura &
Yamashita, 2007; Soares & Naval, 2008) also echoed positive results of blogging in EFL writing. Still, there is little research regarding the integration of blog into process writing in an EFL setting.
2.4 Common Elements in Process Writing and Blog-mediated Research In process writing, feedback (including peer review and teacher’s feedback), self-reflection journal and e-portfolio are three significant elements helping students to develop individual writing process. With the features of interactivity (commenting) (Ducate & Lomicka, 2008) , reflection (journal) (Barlett-Bragg, 2003) and publication (e-portfolio) (Godwin-Jones, 2003), weblogs, though not paper-based, also possess the above three elements in computer-mediated mode. The following review will focus on these three elements commonly found both in process writing and blog-mediated research.
2.4.1 Feedback (Peer Review and Teacher’s Feedback)
The following will discuss two different kinds of feedback in process writing:
peer review and teacher’s feedback. Then, computer-mediated peer review (comment on the blog) will also be discussed.
2.4.1.1 Peer Review
Peer review, also referred to as peer feedback, peer response or peer editing, has long been considered one of the key features of process writing. The National
Conference of Teachers of English (NCTE, 1985) sees peer review as a primary
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source of learning in the following statement:
Students should be encouraged to comment on each other’s writing, as well as receiving frequent, prompt, individualized attention from the teacher. Reading what others have written, speaking about one’s responses to their writing and listening to the responses of others are important activity in the writing
classroom. Textbooks and other instructional resources should be of secondary importance. (NCTE 2)
Research concluded that active participation in peer review leads to improved writing skills (Althauser & Darnall, 2001). In the most widely accepted Hayes and Flower’s planning-writing-reviewing process writing model, peer review is frequently practiced to help the learners to improve their problems on content, organization, grammar and style (Jacob, et al, 1998; Keh, 1990).
Regarding how to conduct an effective peer review, scholars have varied views.
It is believed that training sessions are required to help students offer specific and meaningful feedback (Berg, 1999) and the use of worksheets or checklists in the peer review should reinforce the efficiency of peer review (Damashek, 2003; Gleason, 2001; Roskelly, 1992).
Concerning the implementation of peer review in class, two aspects should be taken into account: the size of the peer review group and the form of training. The size of peer review group should always be kept small: three or four people at most
(Rollinson, 2005; Zhu, 2001), and the paired peer review is “preferred by most EFL students” (Min, 2005). As for the pre-training sessions, watching a video on peer review (Zhu, 2001) and offering a broad categories under which they needed to write comments (Tsui & Ng, 2001) are recommended. Considering that it’s too
time-consuming to watch a video, the researcher takes the 2nd approach providing a worksheet with listed categories as a guideline to conducting a paired peer review.
Arguments on the implementation of peer review have never stopped, even
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though there were many studies spelling out the advantages of peer review. Peer review offers students the need to write to an audience (Rolliston, 2005), encourages a two-way interaction and collaboration in a communicative process (Liu & Carless, 2006), and proves useful not only for those who receive it, but for those who provide it, as it allows students to develop the ability to judge others’ works according to the given standards and this ability will later be transferred to their own works (Nicol &
MacFarlane-Dick, 2006). In a study aiming to explore the benefits of peer review, Tsui & Ng (2000) discovered that even though learners in ESL context favor the teacher’s feedbacks, peer review still possesses the following benefits: a) enhancing a sense of audience; b) raising learners’ awareness of their own strengths and
weaknesses; c) encouraging collaborative learning, and d) fostering the ownership of text. However, there were still several voices in objection to the practice of peer review. For example, Hyland and Hyland (2006) suggested that foreign language learners generally value teacher’s feedback more. Moreover, several studies have also shown that students are unwilling to give peer review for the following reasons: a) they perceived their ability not to be good enough to provide peer feedback; b) they see it as the teacher’s job to provide feedback, and c) they resist having power over their peers or their peers having power over them (Hanrahan & Isaacs, 2001; Liu &
Carless, 2006).
Other than the controversies over the implementation of peer review, there still remain some problems when conducting a peer review in both L1 and L2 context. In L1 context, students tend to give “false impression of the essay’s strengths” (Ransdell, 2001) or “comments typically found in the peer reviews were generally uncritical”
(Althauser & Darnall, 2001). What’s more, teachers often avoid group work, feeling guilty when they are ‘not actually teaching” (Roskelly, 1992). A survey found that many teachers considered peer review to be additional work with marginal results
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(Belcher, 2000). As for peer review in L2 context, Nelson & Murphy (1993) pointed out two reasons why L2 learners held a different view on peer review. First, since English isn’t their native language, L2 learners may feel doubtful about the validity of their peer’s responses. Second, many L2 learners think that the teacher, usually
regarded as the only authority in the classroom, may be the only reliable source to make valid and credible comments. Another major complaint about the peer review is that students, especially untrained L2 learners, do not know how to give specific, meaningful and helpful peer responses (Ferris, 2003). One thing that deserves our mention is that peer review groups are less successful among Chinese students because of their reluctance to criticize others (Carson & Nelson, 1994). In a nutshell, arguments about the practice of peer review still remain inconclusive.
2.4.1.2 Teacher’s Feedback
Research on teacher’s feedback doesn’t lead to solid or conclusive results, either.
In a research review regarding the effectiveness of teacher feedback, Semke (1983) suggested that no matter how the teacher’s written feedback was delivered, there was no evidence that it would produce significant improvements in students’ writing.
However, in a study examining over 1600 comments written by teachers, Ferris (1997) concluded that “a significant proportion of the comments appeared to lead to
substantive student revision….” In comparison with peer feedback, teacher feedback seems more preferable to learners. In a survey on 81 ESL university students, Zhang (1995) found that most of the respondents (94%) preferred teacher feedback over peer or self-directed feedback. In general, most research comes to the similar conclusion that learners prefer teacher feedback to peer feedback, though learners welcome peer feedback as well (Hu, 2005; Jacob et al., 1998; Tsui & Ng, 2000). In short, teacher’s feedback is more valued than peer feedback. Students’ attitudes toward peer review
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are varied, but they generally believe peer feedback can be useful.
Concerning the teacher’s feedback, there are two kinds: direct feedback and indirect feedback (Bitchener et al., 2005). Direct feedback means the teacher identifies an error and provides the correct form, while the indirect feedback means the teacher indicates an error without providing a correction. In a Chinese EFL writing context, teachers usually try to review students’ essays word by word and correct every single problem they find. The great efforts are very time-consuming but not always valued by students. Teachers don’t need to correct every mistake; instead, they can use indirect feedback. Concerning the way to practice indirect feedback, Hyland (1990) suggested “minimal marking” by using correction codes; that is, the teacher marks errors with correction codes, which identify the type of errors. This way, students are given a space for active correction instead of reading the teacher’s
correction written in red pen. Teachers may as well leave comments at the end or on the margin of essays; however, their criticism should be toned down and paired with praises (Hyland & Hyland, 2001). Based on the above arguments, the present researcher chose to give indirect feedback in this study. Errors marked in correction codes and content-related comments on the drafts served as cues for students’
discussion when conducting a peer review. It was expected that the combination of teacher’s feedback and the peer review would help students to solve questions through interaction and collaboration.
The studies on peer review and teacher’s feedback provide us a brief summary of practice and effect of these two kinds of feedback. Studies related to another kind of feedback will be discussed as below. That is, computer-mediated peer review (CMPR), mainly referred to comments on the blog,.
2.4.1.3 Computer-mediated Peer Review (CMPR)
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As technology advances, the computer-mediated peer review (CMPR) has become a new mode in practice and research. Two broad options are available: one is synchronous writing, where students communicate with each other in real time via the Internet chat site, and the other asynchronous writing, where students communicate in a delayed way, such as via e-mail, BBS or blog (Hyland, et al., 20006).
Three advantages were reported in CMPR (Warschauer, 1997). First, students are allowed to take a more active role when seeking feedback. Then comments are stored in the database for later printout. Most important of all, students will feel less pressure in a CMPR than in a face-to-face peer review (FFPR). It’s especially true of Chinese ESL learners who are reluctant to criticize others in a FFPR because of its particular culture where they “generally work toward maintaining group harmony and mutual face-saving to maintain a state of cohesion” (Carson & Nelson, 1994).
Several studies concerning the effect of CMPR gained positive results. First, in a study aiming to compare the difference between CMPR group and FFPR group, the former group was reported to produce a higher percentage of revision-related comments (Liu & Sadler, 2003). Then Catera & Emigh’s (2005) study of a blog project further revealed two major findings: a) the amount and quality of peer
feedback influenced students’ motivation to post comments, and b) peer feedback was equally important and motivating as tutor feedback. With so many positive results on CMPR, attention is drawn to investigate if CMPR could replace the traditional FFPR.
In Ho and Savingon’s (2007) study, investigating the use preference of FFPR and CMPR, 72% of the learners indicated that they preferred the combination of these two.
Li (2009) further suggested that the new emerging CMPR be used only as a
supplement to reinforce the FFPR. In this regard, the present researcher decides to use the two-step procedure (FFPR CMPR) in this study, hoping that students can benefit from peer reviews in different modes while making revisions.