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CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION
5.1 Pedagogical Implications
The outcome of the study suggested a valuable alternative to the conventional way of teaching English writing in EFL classroom. Therefore, some recommendations on teaching writing can be provided for EFL teachers.
First, peer assessment brings about positive effects on lowering students’ writing apprehension, which is evidenced in this study. Besides, it is proved to bring cognitive benefits, personal motivation, and social skills in the previous studies. With the help of computer technology, teachers can facilitate cooperative learning in an efficient way. The Internet helps to offer abundant feedback, unlimited distance and time, learner-controlled pace, rich resources, and so on.
Second, instead of being teacher-dominated, teachers should create a relaxed and communicative environment, in which students can take initiative and expand on the topics of exchanges without worrying too much about the consequences of making grammatical errors (Johnson, 2001; Shen, 1999). In this way, students are not required to be submissive to teachers’ authority; instead, they get plenty support from peers’
opinions. For example, on-line discussion board, e-mail, or chat-room communication activities may provide the benefits of reducing anxiety, increasing motivation, and enhancing student-student relationship in class.
Third, teacher evaluation can be complemented with peer and self-evaluation.
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Teachers should make students know what the evaluation guidelines are and thus decrease their apprehension of being evaluated. Involving them is even better.
Collaboration with students to develop evaluation criteria has been recommended a way to combat writing anxiety in Reeves (1997). In this way, students would feel more secure because they have more control over the evaluation process and results.
Fourth, by adopting process-oriented approach, students should be given time and opportunities to fix the parts they are not satisfied with along the writing process.
Some techniques are recommended in the literature (Leki, 1995, 1999). For instance, pre-writing activities such as brainstorming or free writing in groups can help students generate ideas. In the revision process, peer response activities help create a supportive community, in which they cooperate with each other to construct a better writing.
Fifth, heterogeneous students of different viewpoints, background knowledge, and conceptual framework, provide all sorts of stimulation. By interacting with other members, the teacher isn’t the only source of knowledge any more. Instead, students get more opportunities to be stimulated.
Besides, adopting an asynchronous learning form into the process-oriented writing classes, teachers can offer a platform which allows students to post their first draft, to give and receive peer feedback, and then to post their final revision.
Therefore, students are freed from the limitations of traditional writing tools which often inhibit and restrict writing processes.
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Finally, according to individual language competence, be sure to give individual support and enough modeling in the process of peer assessment. The result of the response questionnaire shows that some students have difficulty appreciating or evaluating others’ writing owing to their low language proficiency. The activity involves in reading the articles, making sound and accurate judgments on the writings, giving feedback or corrections, and even having the ability to use computers. It may cause frustration and anxiety for the low-achievement students so supports from teachers are quite important. Besides, students should be provided with good samples of peer’s feedback. In this way, their comments would be more constructive and beneficial to others’ writing.
5.2 Suggestions for Future Studies
Considering the discussed implications of web-based assessment activity and limitations of the study mentioned in chapter one, some directions of further research and study are recommended.
First, future studies could be conducted for more than a whole school year or even longer so that the long-term improvement of students’ writing ability and peer-assessing ability could be investigated. As for the limited sample problem, further studies could be adapted to a case study format and focus on selected group of students.
Second, the study could be more valid and reliable if it is conducted by using
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experimental and controlled groups. One group takes part in the peer assessment activity, getting plenty of feedback from peers while the other group gets their writing only corrected by the teacher. In this study, students’ writing apprehension lowered after the treatment. Was peer assessment the only contributing factor in their improvement? The question could be answered if the study were conducted experimentally.
Third, in the study, the researcher didn’t make cross-group analysis of students’
performance and opinions in the peer assessment activity. The future researchers may see if students of different language proficiency levels show difference in their performance and response to peer assessment activity. It would be interesting for further study to examine the impact of language proficiency on students’ performance and reactions to peer assessment.
