Using peer feedback to improve students’ writing

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES DƯƠNG THỊ PHƯƠNG THẢO USING PEER FEEDBACK TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ WRITING SỬ DỤNG PHẢN ĐỒNG ĐẲNG ĐỂ NÂNG CAO KỸ NĂNG VIẾT CỦA HỌC SINH M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10 HANOI - 2012 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES DƯƠNG THỊ PHƯƠNG THẢO USING PEER FEEDBACK TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ WRITING SỬ DỤNG PHẢN HỒI ĐỒNG ĐẲNG ĐỂ NÂNG CAO KỸ NĂNG VIẾT CỦA HỌC SINH M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10 Supervisor: Vũ Thị Thu Thuỷ, M.A HANOI - 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements i Declaration ii Abstract iii Table of contents iv Lists of tables, figures and appendices vi PART A: INTRODUCTION The rationale of the study Scope of the study Aims of the study and research questions Significance of the study Methods of the study Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical backgrounds of feedback in students‟ writing 1.1.1 Definitions of feedback 1.1.2 Roles of feedback 1.1.3 Types of feedback 1.1.3.1 Teacher‟s feedback 1.1.3.2 Self-editing 1.1.3.3 Peer feedback 1.2 Previous studies on peer feedback and students‟ writing 10 Chapter 2: THE STUDY 2.1 Learning situation in writing class 13 2.2 Methodology 14 2.2.1 The participants 14 iv 2.2.2 Instrumentation 15 2.2.3 Data collection procedure 15 2.2.4 Data analysis procedure 17 Chapter 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 3.1 The current practice of students‟ peer feedback in writing 19 3.1.1 The use of articles 22 3.1.2 Punctuation 23 3.1.3 Prepositions 23 3.1.4 Word order 24 3.2 Improvement of students‟ writing after receiving peer feedback 25 3.3 Students‟ perceived difficulties when giving feedback to their peers‟ writings 28 3.3.1 Students‟ perceived difficulties in indicating the mistakes in their peers‟ writings 28 3.3.2 Students‟ perceived difficulties in providing suggestions for the mistakes in their peers‟ writings 31 3.4 Implications for the teaching and learning of writing using peer feedback 33 PART C: CONCLUSION Conclusion 35 Limitations of the action research 36 Suggestions for further study 36 REFERENCES APPENDICES v Lists of tables Table 1: Students’ feedback given by peers Table 2: Examples of students’ giving peer feedback in sentence writing Table 3: Students’ improvement in the use of articles and punctuation after receiving peer written feedback Table 4: Students’ improvement in prepositions and word order after receiving peer written feedback Table 5: The students’ levels of difficulty in indicating the mistakes Table 6: The students’ levels of difficulty in providing suggestions for the mistakes List of figures Figure 1: The proportion of students who provided suggestions for mistakes with the use of articles Figure 2: The proportion of students who provided suggestions for mistakes with punctuation Figure 3: The proportion of students who provided suggestions for mistakes related to prepositions List of appendices Appendix 1: Questionnaire Appendix 2: Criteria used to analyze the peer feedback on writing Appendix 3: Symbols for correcting mistakes vi PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale Nowadays, education and training in Vietnam has tried to apply the latest methodology in teaching language skills in general and in teaching writing skills in particular in order to make language teaching and learning as effective as possible Hai Phong Community College (HPCC) is certainly not an exception Since its establishment in 2000, HPCC has paid great attention to English as one of the important subjects so that students after graduating should be able to use English confidently in their jobs and read documents written in English in their majors Therefore, all students at HPCC study English for terms During these terms, they learn and practice the four basic skills and some ESP lessons The textbooks such as New Cutting Egde Elementary (Cunningham, Moor and Eales, 2005), New Cutting Egde - Preintermediate (Cunningham, Moor and Carr, 2005) are chosen as the materials at HPCC The students share the same English course for all the four terms (each term includes 60 periods, 45minutes/period) and some ESP (English for specific purposes) for extra in each term In these four terms, students learn different skills, which are integrated in a module as organized in the textbooks However, writing skills are especially necessary for them Each of the textbooks like that consists of fifteen modules with specific topic, vocabulary and grammar At the end of each lesson, students are usually asked to write a short paragraph of about to sentences based on the topic of the lesson to revise what they have learnt This writing not only helps students revise the vocabulary and grammar but also gives them a chance to get used to writing and expressing ideas in English However, in order to write a short paragraph like that writing correct sentences plays the crucial role Thus, the importance of writing in general and the importance of sentence writing in particular is undeniable, yet, it places a heavy burden on teachers Besides that, each teacher at HPCC has responsibility to work with at least classes each term and there are about at least 40 to 80 students in each class A large amount of feedback from teachers is required Therefore, to help teacher to decrease the overloaded work of marking students‟ papers and to make the process more effectively, one of the most effective ways of giving feedback on writing - peer feedback in sentence writing- was introduced And this study was carried out during the first term of 2011-2012 school year and the textbook is New Cutting Egde - Elementary ( Cunningham, Moor and Eales, 2005) with the first year students learning English at elementary level at HPCC who graduated from High School with English level of years Scope of the study Feedback in writing is such a broad topic including teacher‟s feedback and peer feedback However, it is not my intention to cover both of them because of the time and the length of the study, only peer feedback in sentence writing skills among first year students learning English at elementary level in the first semester at Hai Phong Community College Aims of the study and research questions The study is designed to investigate how peer feedback can be applied to improve students‟ writing In order to achieve this aim, the study attempts to answer the following questions: How students respond to their peers‟ writings? 2 How students improve their writings after receiving peer feedback? What are students‟ perceived difficulties when giving feedback to their peers‟ writings? Significance of the study Theoretically, the study proves that peer written feedback is crucial to the teaching and learning of writing Peer feedback in students‟ writing offers a number of advantages Indeed, peer feedback gives both the readers and the writers more chances for collaboration, consideration and reflection than oral negotiation and debate It also gives the teacher a better chance of effectively following the progress of individuals and groups, both in terms of the feedback offered and revisions made The study, practically, points out that using peer feedback not only eases the teachers‟ burden in giving feedback to students‟ writings but also helps students improve their writing skills Obviously, when students read their peers‟ writings, they not only help their peers recognize and correct the mistakes but also help themselves and become more critical writers Methods of the study An action research was conducted to carry out the study with qualitative features including document analysis and survey questionnaire to obtain adequate information for the study First, document analysis of 210 students‟ drafts with peer written feedback was done to find out how students provide feedback to their peers‟ sentence writing Then, the students‟ first paragraphs were compared with their second one and third with fourth and all with fifth paragraphs (all these paragraphs were given peer written feedback) to see whether the peer written feedback helps them improve their writings Second, the survey was done on the 42 students who had given peer written feedback to find out the students‟ perceived difficulties in responding to their peers‟ writing Design of the study The study consists of three main parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion The first part – Introduction gives reasons for choosing the topic, the aims, the methods of the study and the significance of the study It also narrows the scope of the study and briefly presents an overall out-line of the research study The second part - Development is sub-divided into three chapters Chapter is Literature review, in which the related literature is reviewed Chapter - The study - describes in detail the research methodology which comprises the information of the learning situation, the participants, instrumentation, data collection procedure and data analysis procedure Chapter - Results and Discussion - presents the analysis and discussion of the data and then draws the implications for the teaching and learning of writing using peer written feedback The last part - Conclusion - offers some suggestions, limitations and conclusion for the teaching and learning of writing using peer feedback PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical backgrounds of feedback in students’ writing 1.1.1 Definitions of feedback Though there have been so far few attempts in the literature to define the term “feedback” in teaching writing skills, many researchers, such as Raimes (1983); Chaudron (1988); Ur (1996); Ellis (1985); Stemler (1997), seem to have reached a consensus of the nature and function of feedback Feedback, which can be inferred from the above researchers‟ point of views, has been traditionally identified as the teacher‟s response to the students, and motivated by some actions related to student‟s learning Feedback is “any input from a reader to a writer with the effect of providing information to the writer for revision” - Keh (1990:294) In other words, when giving feedback, the reader gives the writer comments, questions and suggestions with an aim to help him/her revise the writing 1.1.2 Roles of feedback Dheram (1995) and Brown (1988) agree that feedback seems to be central to the process of teaching and learning of writing Feedback in writing is considered as an important aspect to develop students' language awareness so that they can perform effectively in the writing classroom Feedback, as for Zamel (1981), is most effective when it points out critical features of the language; gives information that allows the student „to discover by oneself‟ rules and principles of language; and reduces ambiguity of choice for the learner 3.3.2 Students’ perceived difficulties in providing suggestions for the mistakes in their peers’ writings As mentioned above, when giving feedback to their peers‟ writing, students not only indicated the mistakes but also provided suggestions to improve those mistakes as well Therefore, this part would investigate the difficulties students have when providing suggestions to improve the mistakes (Percentage of students) Levels of difficulty Aspects Very Quite difficult difficult Punctuation Difficult Neutral Easy 36 30 19 19 24 45 Prepositions 17 43 26 Word order 14 24 50 The use of articles Table 6: The students’ levels of difficulty in providing suggestions for the mistakes The use of articles The table above shows that nearly three fourth of the students (73%) either admitted or strongly admitted that they had difficulty in providing suggestions to improve the kind of mistakes in which that is very difficult for 7% of the students, quite difficult for 36% and difficult for 30% of them to give suggestions to this kind of mistakes 19% of them chose the “Neutral” 31 option while only 8% of the students thought that they had no difficulty in providing suggestions to improve the mistakes So, it can be inferred that providing suggestions to improve the mistakes is not as difficult as indicating the mistakes Punctuation Students commonly make punctuation mistakes just because of their carelessness Therefore, it is not difficult for them to recognize the mistakes as well as to provide suggestions for the mistakes if they look over into those mistakes more closely Actually, the proportion of the students (45%) who had no problem in providing suggestions to improve the mistakes is nearly similar to the proportion of those who did (48%) 7% of the students stayed neutral Prepositions This kind of mistakes is rather common not only in students‟ speaking but also in their writing It is possible that the students have the influence of their mother tongue in their speaking and writing Consequently, a large number of the students (86%) had difficulty in providing suggestions for this kind of mistakes in which 17% of the students found it very difficult, 43% of them found it quite difficult and 26% of them found it difficult to suggest for the kind of mistakes 5% of the students were not sure that providing suggestions is difficult or easy Only 9% of them showed that they had no difficulty in providing suggestions for the mistakes related to prepositions 32 Word order When students have recognized the mistakes related to word order, it is not difficult for them to provide suggestions to improve the mistakes In fact, the table above shows that half of the students (50%) had no problem with providing suggestions to improve this kind of mistakes while 5% of them were not sure and 45% of them found difficulty in giving suggestions, in which 7% of the students found it very difficult to provide suggestions, 14% found it quite difficult and 24% found it difficult to offer suggestions to improve the mistakes related to word order 3.4 Implications for the teaching and learning of writing using peer feedback in sentence writing The findings of the research have proved that using peer feedback in writing can help students improve their writing skills, especially their sentence writing Based on the findings, the following suggestions are provided with a hope to improve the teaching and learning of writing using peer written feedback Firstly, as discussed above, the students face a lot of difficulties when giving feedback to their peers‟ writings, so the teacher should guide students carefully what to during their giving feedback to each other‟s writing One way to help students approach the feedback task is to provide them with samples because it is a very useful tool to direct the students‟ attention to the elements which should be focused on during peer feedback sessions That‟s why, the teacher should carefully prepare the samples which are suitable for each writing task and then guide them how to work basing on these samples This way will help students perform the task more effectively 33 Secondly, the data shows that when giving feedback to each other‟s writing, very few students paid attention to the paragraph organization to identify the mistakes related to all the aspects above and most of the students agreed that they had difficulties in indicating the mistakes and providing suggestions to improve them This is because they still not have a clear idea of paragraph organization Therefore, the teacher should provide them with careful instructions of paragraph organization so that they can write a paragraph with a correct organization and they can identify and provide suggestions for the mistakes more easily In addition, peer feedback in sentence writing is said to be difficult not only for the students to perform but also for the teacher to manage the writing lesson as well That‟s why, the teacher should be aware of their roles and he/she should keep walking around the class so as to check students‟ work and give them instant help when they need Finally, the most common mistakes that students made and paid their attention to are the mistakes related to the use of articles and preposition mistakes Thus, before students‟ giving feedback to each other‟s sentence writing, the teacher should help students revise the grammar and vocabulary carefully Besides, the teacher should emphasize some most common mistakes and illustrate them by giving examples so that students can avoid such mistakes as well as notice the mistakes in their writing more easily 34 PART C: CONCLUSION Conclusion In the study above, the major issues concerning students‟ peer feedback in sentence writing have been taken into consideration and examined both theoretically and practically The results of study have pointed out that peer feedback in writing classroom is a “time consuming activity” However, it may not be time wasted In addition, the results of the analysis of peer feedback in students‟ writing also have proved some other advantages of peer written feedback in which the areas of the writing that received the greatest benefits from peer written feedback were the grammar and vocabulary Obviously, peer written feedback helped students improve their grammar and vocabulary whereas the paragraph organization stayed almost unchanged However, students learning English at elementary level at HPCC still face a lot of difficulties when giving feedback to their peers‟ writing in both indicating the mistakes and providing suggestions So, they need teachers‟ careful assistance in providing them with adequate training and practice in carrying out these activities The study has also provided some implications for the teaching and learning of writing using peer written feedback The most important one, in the researcher‟s opinion, is that teachers should train students carefully how to give peer written feedback and give them enough practice The author of this study hopes that the findings here will help those who want to use peer written feedback more effectively in teaching writing skills at HPCC in particular and at other colleges or universities in general 35 Limitations of the action research Although great effort has been made by the researcher while carrying out the study, there have been still limitations as follows: Firstly, due to some conditions such as: the time constraints, the students‟ level; the author of this study only examined the some common mistakes based on the six modules that students learn in the first semester of the course, not all kinds of mistakes in the writing This might lead to the fact that the results drawn out from the research are not yet totally satisfying Secondly, the research only concerns one type of peer feedback so it can not exploit all the advantages of peer feedback to help students review their writing better Despite the limitations above, the author hopes that the study will make a contribution to the better situation of teaching and learning writing skill at HPCC Suggestions for further study Further studies could examine the other types of peer feedback that has not been touched upon in this research-oral peer feedback Besides, this research only focuses on the use of peer written feedback in the teaching and learning of writing, especially in sentence writing So, further research could examine the use of peer feedback in the teaching and learning of other skills 36 REFERENCES Byrne, D (1991), Teaching writing skills – Longman handbooks for language teacher, Longman, London Charles, M (1990), “Responding to problems in written English using a student self-monitoring technique”, ELT Journal, 44, pp.286-293 Chaudron, C (1984), “The effects of feedback on students‟ composition revisions”, RELC Journal, 15(2), pp.1-14 Coffin, C., Curry, M., Goodman, S., Hewings, A., Lillis, T., & Swann, J (2003) Teaching academic writing: A toolkit for higher education, London: Routledge Cohen, A.D (1998), Strategies in learning and using a second language, Harlow, England, Longman Dheram, P K (1995), “Feedback as a two-bullock cart: A case study of teaching writing” ELT Journal, Vol.49, No 2, pp160-68 Durham, N.R (2005), “Peer evaluation as an active learning technique”, Journal of Instructional Psychology, Vol 32, No 4, pp.338-343 Ellis, R (1985), “Teacher-pupil interaction in second language development” in Gass and Madden (eds) 1985 Hedge, T (2005), Writing, Oxford University Press 10 Hyland, K (1990), “Providing productive feedback”, ELT Journal, 44(4), pp.279-285 11 Jacobs, G (1989), “Miscorrection in Peer Feedback in Writing Class”, RELC Journal, 21(1), pp.68-76 12 Kamimura, T (2006), “Effects of Peer Feedback on EFL Student Writers at Different 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Glisan, Eilleen W (2002), Teacher’s Handbook: contextualized language instruction, Heinle & Heinle college foreign language publishing term 29 Stemler, L.K (1997), “Educational Characteristics of Multimedia: A Literature Review”, Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia 6: 3/4, 339-359 30 Topping, K., E Smith, I Swanson, and A Elliot (2000), “Formative peer assessment of academic writing between postgraduate students” Assessment and Evaluation In Higher Education, 25, 2, pp 149-169 31 Topping, K (2009), “Peer Assessment: Theory into practice”, Routldge: Taylor and Francis group publisher, 48, pp.20-27 32 Ur, P (1996), A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory, Cambridge University Press, p.2 33 Zainurrahman, (2010), “Teaching Writing through Peer Feedback: Peer Feedback in English as Second Language Writing”, Indonesia University of Education, http://www.articlesbase.com/languages-articles/teachingwriting-through-peer-feedback-2731309.html 34 Zamel, N (1983), “The composing processes of advanced ESL students: six case studies”, TESOL Quarterly, 17, pp.165-187 39 35 Zamel, V (1985), “Responding to student writing”, TESOL Quarterly, 19, pp.79-202 36 Zhang, S (1995), “Reexamining the affective advantage of peer feedback in the ESL writing class”, Journal of Second Language Writing, 4, 3, pp 209-222 37 Zeng, Y (2006), “Peer Feedback in College SLW Classroom”, Sino-US English Teaching, ISSN 1539-8072, USA Mar 2006, Volume 3, No.3 (Serial No.27) 40 Appendix 1: Criteria used to analyze the peer feedback in writing Aspects Criteria Grammar Indicating the mistakes with or without providing suggestions a The use of verbs b Articles c Prepositions d Punctuation Vocabulary Indicating the mistakes with or without providing suggestions a Word order b Word choice c Word form Connective devices Correct and adequate transitional devices General written Useful comments I Answer (Yes/No) Appendix 2: Symbols for correcting mistakes Symbols Examples Meaning ^ She went ^ school yesterday Something is I am ^ student missing WO She likes very much this Wrong order Ag She like milk Wrong agreement I have got three cat T Tom visit his mum yesterday Wrong tense He goes to Ha Long bay next month Sp It‟s very confortable Wrong punctuation P My name‟ James Wrong punctuation WF She plays tennis very beautiful Wrong form He‟d like go to the cinema ? But the old man the book now? I don‟t understand What you mean? Art He studies at an university in London Article Prep He arrived at London at 7:30 this preposition morning WC My employment is very interesting II Wrong word Appendix 3: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE This survey questionnaire is designed for my study in “Using peer feedback to improve students‟ writing” among the first year students at Hai Phong Community College Your assistance in completing the survey is highly appreciated All the information provided by you is reserved for the study purpose Thank you very much Personal details: Male/Female: ………………………………… Time of learning English: …………………… Please choose an option and put a cross “X” in the space provided or circle the best answer You have difficulties in indicating the mistakes related to: Levels of difficulty Aspects Very Quite difficult difficult Difficult The use of articles Punctuation Prepositions Word order III Neutral Easy You have difficulties in providing suggestions to improve: Levels of difficulty Aspects Very Quite difficult difficult Difficult Neutral Easy The use of articles Punctuation Prepositions Word order You have difficulties in indicating and in providing suggestions for the mistakes related to the aspects above because (may choose more than One option)  You are not good at writing in English  You don‟t understand your peer‟s ideas  You are afraid of hurting your friend  You are afraid of being misunderstood by your peer Do you expect your peer to give you suggestions when having peer feedback activities?  Yes  No How you think about your peer‟s suggestions to your writing? Very useful Quite useful Useful Neutral Not useful How often would you like your teacher to provide you suggestions if you don‟t receive your peer‟s feedback? IV Always Almost always Sometimes Seldom Never How you think about peer feedback tasks that the teacher asks you to do? Very effective Quite effective Effective Neutral Not effective * Other comments The end V