HOW TO USE “PEER FEEDBACK” EFFECTIVELY TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILL FOR 10TH GRADERS AT THIEU HOA HIGH SCHOOL

THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING THIEU HOA HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE HOW TO USE “PEER FEEDBACK” EFFECTIVELY TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILL FOR 10TH GRADERS AT THIEU HOA HIGH SCHOOL The author: Trinh Thi Loan Job position: Teacher Subject: English THANH HOÁ – 2019 I INTRODUCTION Rationale for the study Writing is wildly viewed as a process and it requires contributions of time from teachers and students in order for it to achieve satisfactory results These days, there have been a lot of techniques recommended to boost students’ writing competence From my teaching experience, I am convinced that giving writing feedback is of great importance because feedback is considered an indispensable component of instructing and learning process, the implementation of effective feedback, therefore, plays a key role in improving students’ writing skill Unfortunately, in reality, assessing or grading writing papers and providing students with feedback in overcrowded classrooms has become a real challenge for teachers in my rural teaching context In some classrooms, for example, the student to teacher ratio is 100-150 students per teacher Teaching in such overpopulated classrooms limits the feedback the teachers can provide to students so opportunities to receive it are often scarce in classrooms This is certainly the case in large language learning classes at my school Another factor posing a challenge for promoting students’ writing development of is that teachers have limited time to grade students’ papers This often means students receive feedback long after completing a written task, making it hard for them to work on their weaknesses and improve on their strengths before completing subsequent writing assignments Receiving feedback late definitely does not help students learn better This practical situation raises a big question is that “how can teachers provide their students with credible and timely feedback?” Peer feedback may represent one way of responding to this question I have applied this kind of feedback in my writing classes for long enough to assure its great significance in motivating students’ participation, cultivating their critical thinking and developing their ability of self-regulated learning Students become information-and-assistance providers for they have sufficient time, energy and resource It is especially applicable to large-size English classes in school The above reasons have inspired me to conduct my initiative with the title “How to use peer feedback effectively to improve writing skill for 10 th graders at Thieu Hoa high school” with the hope of sharing my experience about using peer feedback in teaching writing skill Objectives of research 2.1 For the students - Provide learners with an overview of how to perform peer feedback in writing exercises - Help students to enable to find the mistakes in the writing papers and correct them quickly and effectively 2.2 For the teachers - Find out the most effective methods to improve students’ writing skill in general and the method of applying peer feedback in detail - Know how to stimulate students to improve their writing skills 3 Research methodology I write this topic based on: - The method of studying theory - The method of investigating - Applying the topic to real teaching English at Thieu Hoa high school - Comparison, collation and summary of the result, effect of the topic Scope of research The scope of this study is limited to “peer feedback” carried out in writing lessons in English 10 at high school It explores the strengths and limitation of peer feedback in teaching and learning writing skill, the real situation of giving written corrective peer feedback at my school and how to make use of peer feedback to improve writing skill for 10th graders II PROBLEM SOLVING Theoretical background and practical background 1 Theoretical background Writing, unlike speaking, is not an ability we acquire naturally, even in our first language - it has to be taught Writing is a system for interpersonal communication using various styles of language (Jalaludin, 2011) It plays a fundamental role in our personal and professional lives In academia, writing has become central as a measure for academic success Giving feedback in writing is an activity after students have written a complete draft of a paper, but while there is still time for substantial revision or it can be carried out in the post-writing Peer feedback means feedback from your fellow students If you are working on the same assignment as another student, peer feedback can mean exchanging drafts and comments on each others' drafts Providing peer feedback can better students’ own writing skill By giving feedback to friends, students often begin to think more flexibly about their own writings This experience will promote the student’s ability to take the grader’s perspective when they feedback their own work before submitting it for a grade Furthermore, peer feedback gives students responsibility for critiquing writing (and thinking), rather than putting all the responsibility on teachers The hope is that they will internalize this process and carry it on independently, to the benefit of their future work Practical background Most of the teachers at my school consider peer feedback as an ineffective technique for improving students' writing and prefer teacher feedback to peer feedback They believe that teachers are only ones who have high knowledge to provide feedback to students' writing and peer feedback is time-consuming Until now hardly have English teachers at high school in my province used peer feedback in teaching writing skill and students are generally not used to giving or receiving peer feedback during a writing lesson I met with a lot of disapproval when I told my colleagues about my intention of applying peer feedback in a writing lesson They suppose there is not enough time for peer feedback They have been following these procedures when teaching writing lessons A traditional writing lesson plan at my high school includes: I Warm-up (5 minutes): Games or checking the old lesson II Pre – writing (12 minutes) Prewriting is the preparation the teacher and students before students begin to draft the paper In this stage, vocabulary is taught and structure or format is prsented Usually, some tasks designed in the textbook are carried out III While – writing (13minutes) Students begin to put the paper in paragraph form They may write their papers individually, in pairs or in groups Teachers observe and help IV Post – Writing.( 10 minutes ) Teacher gives feedback The more time the teacher has, the more papers he / she gives feedback to V Homework (5 minutes) Here are the results after students in class in 10 th form (10B) when they were required to write a paragraph (100 words) about their daily activities when the teacher follows the traditional writing lesson plans This test was done at the beginning of the school year Class Number of students 8.0 – 10.0 6.5 - 7.0 5.0 – 6.0