Effects of Online Peer Response on EFL College Writing

• Main Authors: Chi-Wen Chien, 簡啟雯
• Other Authors: Hsien-Chin Liou
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/41605704885090433139

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 外國語文學系 === 93 === With the support of the process writing approach, collaborative learning theory, and sociocultural theory of second language learning, peer response activities have gained increasing attention and become a common feature of process-oriented writing classrooms. Traditionally, peer response has taken place in face-to-face writing groups. A critical review of some studies has indicated students’ positive perceptions of peer feedback and beneficial impact of peer response on students’ writings. With the widespread of Internet technology in students’ daily life, online peer response has become an option for writing teachers. Yet, few of the previous studies have explored what has happened in the process of online peer response. In addition, language teachers and intermediate learners in EFL settings, our target learners in this study, need help targeting at text-based accuracy. Adverbial connective and verb-noun collocaitonal usages in student writing have been noted by prior research as common errors on ESL and EFL learners and thus targeted for investigation in this study. Based on the blogging mechanism, a web-based platform, POWER (Peer Online Writing & Editing Room) was developed. POWER enables document sharing, co-editing, and online chat with the enhancement of a bilingual concordancer and a collocation retrieval program. With the help of peer response and online writing tools, L2 learners’ inaccurate use of connectors and collocations in English writing might decrease as past research suggested, and thus, heighten the overall quality of the writing. The thesis study examines to which extent POWER can help EFL college students write better or more accurately. Based on a single group pretest-posttest research design with three cycles of drafting, with peer response and revising in pair-work as its instructional design, a test in a controlled format and a timed writing task were given before and after the three cycles. There was also an evaluation questionnaire at the end of the study. The online activities lasted about eight weeks. Seventeen college freshmen of English-majors participated. In addition to the learning product data of the tests, learning process data included students’ drafts and revised versions, and the discussion logs out of a sample of four representative peer dyads. The results pointed to learners’ positive attitudes toward conducting peer response on POWER for revision. Learners’ improvement in the usages of connectors and collocation as well as in overall writing quality was also revealed. Moreover, it was found that during peer response sessions, students concentrated very much on their writing tasks since most of their online utterances were on task-related talk. Of these task-related utterances, a relatively high percentage was devoted to the form of writing, indicating that grammatical accuracy was what concerned these EFL student writers most. The findings further showed that students were able to make use of various language functions to negotiate with their partners while doing online peer response. When serving as reviewers, compared to writers, they initiated more idea units and tended to assume a more active role, dominating the interaction during online peer response. Additionally, the results reported that most students revised mainly according to the feedback they received from peers. This outcome coincided with the usefulness of peer comments as confirmed in the Evaluation Questionnaire. Through the process data from four sampled pairs, idiosyncratic features of each dyad indicated that some pairs were highly collaborative. Some yet led imbalanced interaction by depending a lot on the partner. Some treated each other with respect, but still kept self-independency. In spite of distinctive characteristics, all the four peer dyads were found cooperative and tried their best to help each other write better. The results of the current study showed that online peer response could foster learners’ ability of English writing. Moreover, it is suggested that with explicit instruction and prior preparation for online peer collaboration, learners were capable of using various language functions to scaffold their peers or to complement each other during online peer response sessions. For teaching implications, it is recommended that teachers make good use of the recording function of the discussion logs to track learners’ accountability in the online environment as well as equip themselves with basic computer and electronic literacy for the exploitation of the online peer response platform. With regard to directions for future refinements, more participants with heterogeneous backgrounds should be included and longer-term studies are suggested to verify the effects of online peer response on English writing.