Incorporating Peer Response into Asynchronous Computer Mediated Communication

• Main Author: 康佩如
• Other Authors: 吳靜芬
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/50576693132527534960

碩士 === 國立嘉義大學 === 外國語言學系研究所 === 98 === This qualitative study investigated the types of responses that EFL students offered to their peers’ written texts on the weblog, and the aspects of revision changes as a result of peer responses. Participants were four senior high school students with various levels of English proficiency. Students’ written texts and online responses were collected and analyzed by content analysis, and in-depth interviews were conducted. The findings showed that the participants yielded various types of comments, including suggestions, explanations, social messages, questions, and restatements to help their peers with their drafts. Students incorporated 76% peer responses into the subsequent revisions, bringing about 82.5 % successful changes, including surface changes, phrasal changes, lexical changes, content changes and structural changes. Though peer response focused on both local and global issues of the texts, it was found that micro-level changes dominated the occurrences of successful changes. In sum, ACMC system will be a plausible tool to conduct peer responses if the instructors assist students in constructing a learning community online which encourages intensive online interaction that are beneficial to students’ learning. Though the findings confirmed that ACMC has positive effects on students’ learning, it is suggested that writing instructors combined ACMC with face-to-face interaction for the most learning outcome to occur. This study highlighted an alternative medium of responding and revising, and offered insights into the utilization of technology in EFL learning contexts.