February 2013

#13 PEER FEEDBACK ON WRITING: AN ASSESSMENT-FOR-LEARNING

TOOL
Shelley Stagg Peterson
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Peer feedback, when guided by teacher modeling and assessment criteria, is a useful assessment-forlearning tool that has been shown to support students writing development and contribute to students
revisions to improve their writing (Boscolo & Ascorti, 2004; Graham & Perin, 2007). Peer feedback can
be helpful across the elementary grades, though extensive teacher support is needed in grades one and
two. Peers comments about how the writing made them think or feel, together with their commendations
or suggestions about the content (e.g., characters or plot of narratives; inclusion of examples and other
needed information in essays or persuasive arguments), or about the language and other elements of the
authors writing style, provide helpful starting points for revisions that improve students writing. Certain
types of feedback, such as emotional responses that show what kind of effect the writing has on the
audience, and feedback that focuses on scoring criteria, have been shown to be most useful to student
writers (Hansen & Liu, 2005; Peterson, 2003). In a grade eight classroom (Peterson, 2003), for example,
students were more likely to revise their writing when peers suggested that particular events did not seem
plausible. Three of the four focus students did not revise their writing in response to feedback indicating a
need for greater clarity, as they viewed such peer feedback as a reflection of their peers carelessness in
reading the writing, rather than a need for revisions.
Peer feedback benefits not only the students who receive suggestions for improving the writing, but also
the feedback providers, as they gain a greater awareness of qualities of good writing through assessing
and commenting on peers writing. Peer feedback also develops students self-assessment abilities, as
they gain experience in using the criteria to read their own writing (Cho & MacArthur, 2010; Lundstrom
& Baker, 2009). In these respects, peer feedback is truly an assessment-for-learning tool (Black,
Harrison, Lee, Marshall, & Wiliam, 2003) that should be an ongoing part of writers workshop (Graves,
1994).

Teachers Support for Peer Feedback

It is important to teach students how to give feedback to their peers and how to work with the feedback.
This includes setting parameters to ensure that students do not feel discouraged or hurt after receiving
peer feedback and maintaining a sense of ownership over the writing: students should be aware that they
do not have to use feedback that they feel will not improve their writing. It is also important to provide
guidelines for the content of the feedback. Researchers recommend teaching students revision strategies
and qualities of good writing assessed by scoring criteria that students know (MacArthur, 2007). Students
in a grade one class, for example, provided feedback that their peers felt was useful and made many

revisions and edits that incorporated peers suggestions after receiving such formal instruction. Their
teacher used ongoing modeling, examples, and reinforcement through posting reminder charts around the
classroom and giving students feedback on how well their peer feedback matched the helpful feedback
criteria established by the class (Peterson & Portier, 2012). Another effective practice involved students
observing two peers using a set of criteria to give feedback, discussing how effective the feedback was,
and then applying what they learned when giving feedback to peers on their writing (Van Steendam,
Rijlaarsdam, Sercu, & Van den Bergh, 2010).
When desk or tables are arranged so students can easily talk to each other while they write, informal peer
feedback is often a natural part of students writing processes. Students may ask each other for help with
ideas, words, spellings, etc. or they may run a sentence or idea by peers to get a sense of audience
reaction. Authors groups (Graves & Hansen, 1983) are a commonly-used forum for peer feedback.
Students read their writing aloud to each other in turn and often take a two stars and a wish or
sandwich approach where two positive comments are included alongside a more critical comment that
identifies an element that could be improved (Peterson & McClay, 2010). In one study, students working
in pairs as one student read the others writing, identified an aspect that was not clear to her/him, and then
discussed with the author possible ways to revise in order to clarify the point (Boscolo & Ascorti, 2004).
In addition, a successful peer feedback context implemented by a grade 8 teacher involved inviting
students to exchange their drafts with a partner, write comments on the draft and then give oral feedback
to each other (Peterson, 2003).
In summary, peer feedback on writing develops students self-assessment abilities through providing
opportunities to learn and apply scoring criteria. It also provides helpful information to guide revisions
that improve students writing. Teacher support through modeling, providing examples, and giving
reinforcement on the content and processes for exchanging peer feedback, is necessary to ensure the
effectiveness of peer feedback.

Further Reading
Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B., & Wiliam, D. (2003). Assessment for learning: Putting it
into practice. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.
Boscolo, P. & Ascorti, K. (2004). Effects of collaborative revision on childrens ability to write
understandable narrative texts. In L. Allal, L. Chanqouy, & P. Largy (Eds.), Revision: Cognitive and
instructional processes (Vol. 13, pp. 157-170). Boston, MA: Kluwer.
Cho, K. & MacArthur, C. (2010). Student revision with peer and expert reviewing. Learning and
Instruction, 20, 328-338.
Graham, S. & Perin, D. (2007). A meta-analysis of writing instruction for adolescent students. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 99, 445-476.
Graves, D. (1994). A fresh look at writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Graves, D. & Hansen, J. (1983). The authors chair. Language Arts, 60(2), 176-183.
Hansen, J. & Liu, J. (2005). Guiding principles for effective peer response. ELT Journal, 59, 31-38.
Lundstrom, K. & Baker, W. (2009). To give is better than to receive: the benefits of peer review to the
reviewers own writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 18, 30-43.

MacArthur, C.A. (2007). Best practice in teaching evaluation and revision. In S. Graham, C. MacArthur, &
J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Best practice in writing instruction (pp. 141-162). New York: Guilford.
Peterson, S. (2003). Peer influences on students revisions of their narrative writing. L-1 Educational
Studies in Language and Literature, 30, 239272.
Peterson, S.S. & McClay, J. (2010). Assessing and providing feedback for student writing in Canadian
classrooms. Assessing Writing, 15(2), 86-99.
Peterson, S.S. & Portier, C. (in press). Grade one peer and teacher feedback on student writing. Education
3-13, 40(4).
Van Steendam, E., Rijlaarsdam, G., Sercu, L., U Van den Bergh, H. (2010). The effect of instruction type
and dyadic or individual emulation on the quality of higher-order peer feedback in EFL. Learning and
Instruction, 20, 316-327.