Title: Effects of Teacher and Peer Feedback on Students' Writing at Secondary Level
Abstract: AbstractThis research investigates the effectiveness of peer feedback and teacher feedback on the written performance of the students and also examines students' attitude towards peer feedback and teacher feedback. Data was collected from five different government schools by using a survey questionnaire, students' pre-test and post-test, and students' written remarks about the whole experimental feedback activity from the sample including 100 students studying at secondary level in Bahawalpur. The results showed that students have positive attitudes towards teacher feedback and peer feedback, and this activity helped them improve their performance. Teacher feedback and peer feedback provides an effective way of learning to the students.Keywords: Peer Feedback, Secondary Education, Writing Skill, Speaking Abilities, First Language, Communicative LanguageIntroductionA lot of emphasis is paid on developing listening and speaking abilities as compared to writing skills. Writing instructions are generally overlooked. In Pakistan, students are not provided with enough input of foreign language as English is not our first language and our environment does not offer such exposure. As a result teachers and students have to work hard to abridge this gap. Like other skills, teaching writing is an important skill that must be acquired by the ESL learners and teachers should also strive for a better method to teach English writing. In the light of communicative language teaching, process approach is the most prevalent approach to the teaching of writing.Feedback is a crucial aspect in the process of teaching writing skills. It plays an important role in motivating the students for further learning. Students become aware of their needs for improvement and also of the degree of their learning. Brown (1994) regards feedback as one of the keys to successful learning and Gipps (1994) considers it as a critical feature of learning and teaching language. Many researchers (e.g., Paulus (1999), Min (2006), Zhang (2008) and Chiu (2008) have proved that feedback, in both oral and written form, fosters the improvement of writing.Apart from traditional feedback, i.e. teacher feedback, peer feedback is a learning strategy in which students respond to one another's written work and provide feedback. Peer feedback has a number of benefits for the students. It focuses on the writing process, improves students' critical skills and allows them to improve their work before it is graded. Peer feedback activity helps them raise the sense of audience for both the writer and reader. Students make their writing more effective and audience oriented through discussing it with their peers. Peers provide them immediate feedback. They can ask questions and seek clarification through discussions. Through discussing and reading alternative point of views on the same topic they can revise and refine their own ideas in an effective way. In this way a real communication occurs in their arranging, explaining and justifying, which is also a main goal of language learning. Working with peers from different backgrounds and specialities provides the learners a chance to complement themselves with their peers. Peer feedback makes them motivated towards writing with the help of positive feedback from their peers and their apprehensions can be lowered (Tsui & Ng, 2000). Moreover, Caulk (1994) also states that it is different from teacher feedback. Rollinson (2005) listed out some advantages of peer feedback over teacher feedback. Peer feedback is more informal than teachers'. It is a two way interaction between the reader and writer or peers, they effectively negotiate their intended meanings, ask for clarification and questions. While teacher feedback is a one way interaction where student may end up making revision in his drafts without agreeing to or even understanding the teacher's comments. Whereas in peer feedback, he has the right to reject or incorporate the peers' comments in his revised draft. …
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 14
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