Draft for Literature review

Topic: Students’ attitudes towards peer feedback in EFL writing: A study of first year
English majors at Hanoi University

1. Definition of feedback and peer feedback

Feedback has a crucial role to play in enhancing the process of learning English
language.
Narciss (2018, p.305) defined feedback as “all post-response information that is provided
to a learner to inform the learner on his or her actual state of learning or performance”.
Bijami, Kashef and Nejad (2013, p.92) emphasized the most important factor in dealing
with feedback is to “help students reconstruct their own knowledge or skills to what is
desired”. Nelson and Schunn (2009) suggested two types of feedback namely cognitive
and affective feedback. While cognitive feedback focuses on the content of the work,
affective feedback includes praise and criticism or suggestions using mitigating language
so as to sound less abrasive to feedback receivers. Walker (2009) stressed the usability of
feedback can only be optimized if it is designed to help students narrow the gap in their
language performance.
There has been a multitude of studies examining different types of feedback in L2
learning and teaching. Amongst those is peer feedback which is considered “a popular
source of feedback in L2 classroom and a continuing area for research” (Hyland &
Hyland, 2006, p.90).
Liu and Hansen (2002) considered peer feedback as a way to use of learners “as sources
of information and interactants for each other”. In a similar vein, Vygotsky (1978, as
cited in Bijami et al., 2013, p. 93) maintained that peer feedback is of paramount
importance to the improvement of students’ learning as “learning is not an individual
activity, but a cognitive activity with the focus on interaction within a social context”.
Gielen, Peeters, Dochy, Onghena, and Struyven (2010) explained that peer feedback is a
form of formative assessment and collaborative learning provided by equal status
learners. In the context of ESL / EFL writing classrooms, Liu and Hansen (2002) gave
further explanation that learners in this case also serve the role of a teacher commenting
 on and critiquing each other’s drafts in both written and oral formats in the process of
writing.
2. Advantages and disadvantages of peer feedback in writing
2.1. Advantages of peer feedback in writing
Peer feedback can be beneficial on both pedagogical and psychological aspects. With
regard to pedagogical aspects, peer feedback can encourage students’ engagement in
learning activities and allow learners more control and autonomy as opposed to passive
reliance on teacher feedback (Hyland, 2000; Yarrow & Topping, 2001; Hyland &
Hyland, 2006). Moreover, effective peer feedback helps to increase the frequency, extent
and speed of feedback and at the same time reduces the workload for teachers (Gielen et
al., 2010). In addition, when engaging in peer response processes, students are provided
with an audience for writing, which in turn make language learning more authentic than
just receiving teachers’ responses (Hyland & Hyland, 2006). Peer feedback can also be
beneficial to reviewers as it gives them opportunities to practice and develop different
language skills and enhance the ability of peer reviewers (Yang, Badger & Yu, 2006).
In terms of the psychological aspects, peer feedback can help to reduce writer
apprehension and enhance self-confidence of language learners (Yarrow & Topping,
2001; Hyland & Hyland, 2006). Additionally, oral interactions with peers during the
writing process can provide learners with both social and affective support (Hyland &
Hyland, 2006)
2.2. Disadvantages of peer feedback in writing

There still remains a number of drawbacks regarding the use of peer feedback in writing.
Peer responses tend to focus on product rather than the process of writing (Storch, 2004).
In other words, many students in L2 contexts when engaging in the process of peer
editing tend to focus on local errors (i.e. sentence level errors) rather than global errors
(i.e. content and ideas) (Storch, 2004). Moreover, students were also reported having
problems identifying errors and providing quality feedback for their peers (Hyland,
2000). More importantly, students also reported that they wanted to have peer feedback
as a complementary part of teacher feedback, rather than instead of it (Jacobs, Curtis,
Braine & Huang, 1998; Tsui & Ng, 2000).
3. Previous studies on students’ perceptions of using peer feedback to improve their
writing performance
Lee (2015) examined 30 junior grade learners’ perspectives on peer feedback and teacher
feedback in Hong Kong. The findings suggested that teacher feedback was rated more
positively than peer feedback among participants as students perceived teacher feedback
was more effective to peer feedback in terms of practical value. However, students also
realized the motivational and cognitive benefits of peer feedback when used as
supplementary and/or complementary to teacher feedback. The participants in the study
expressed their enjoyment in the constructive environment during peer feedback
activities. Moreover, peer feedback also appeared more appealing to students as it made
the writing process more relaxing and delightful. It also helps raise writers’ audience
awareness as students made greater effort to maintain readability when writing for peer
response.
These findings also affirmed to the work of Srichanyachon (2012) which aimed to
investigate 174 Bangkok University students’ attitudes towards two types of revision
methods namely peer and teacher feedback. The results indicated that teacher feedback is
regarded as a more effective and preferable method among students. However, students
in the study also welcomed peer feedback as a means of supporting teacher feedback
because they had the chance to learn from other students’ perspectives and were more
motivated to improve their writing ability.
However, in a study to investigate 53 Chinese EFL learners’ perceptions of the impact of
peer feedback on their writing, Wang (2013) reported that students perceived usefulness
of peer feedback for draft revision followed a downward trend. There were five factors
affecting the perceived usefulness suggested in the study, which are students’ insufficient
knowledge of assigned topics, their limited English proficiency, dyadic peer interaction,
time constraints and the concern about interpersonal relationship in peer interaction. With
regard to the factor of students’ English proficiency, the participants maintained that peer
feedback did not provide sufficient guidance to solve non rule-based problems of
language use such as inappropriate word choice or sentence structures. In addition, time
constraints are another factor that hinder the effectiveness of peer feedback as students
complained about the lack of time for oral discussion of their written comments. This
 problem of peer feedback is also addressed by Rollinson (2005) that the peer response
process requires a considerable investment of time in which learners have to learn various
basic procedures such as debating, questioning, defending and expressing criticisms and
suggestions in a tactful way. The participants in Wang (2013)’s study were also reported
to be cautious about giving feedback for their classmates to avoid conflict within their
groups.
The biased views of peer and teacher feedback in which Asian English learners tend to
favour teacher feedback were also reported in a number of empirical studies (Carson &
Nelson, 1996; Cheng and Warren, 2000; Zhao, 2010;). A plausible explanation for this
was due to their long-term teacher dominated learning experience in the ESL / EFL
classrooms.
On the contrary, in a study to explore the impact of formative peer feedback on higher
education students’ academic writing, Huisman, Saab, Broek, and Driel (2019) reported
the engagement in peer feedback lead to significant writing improvements compared to
no feedback or self-assessment. More importantly, peer feedback is considered as
effective as feedback from teaching staff.
Zhao (2010) aimed to distinguish learners’ use from their understanding of peer and
teacher feedback. It was found that students used more teacher than peer feedback in their
redrafts; however, students reported that they understood a larger portion of peer
feedback than teacher feedback. Based on this finding, Zhao (2010) suggested that the
feedback used without students’ comprehension might only help to improve the quality of
immediate text, not learners’ long term writing competence.

REFERENCES

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Carson, J. G., & Nelson, G. L. (1996). Chinese students' perceptions of ESL peer response group
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