198 Responding to student writing

Reflection 7.12
When do you think oral feedback may be more effective than written feedback?
How would you employ the two forms to best advantage in a writing course?

Peer feedback

The idea of students receiving feedback on their writing from their peers
developed from L1 process classes and has become an important alternative
to teacher-based forms of response in ESL contexts. Peer response is said to
provide a means of both improving writers’ drafts and developing readers’
understandings of good writing, but teachers have generally been more
positive than students, who tend to prefer teacher feedback, and its benefits
have been hard to confirm empirically in L2 situations.

Pros and cons of peer review

The theoretical advantages of peer response are based largely on the fact that
writing and learning are social processes. Collaborative peer review helps
learners engage in a community of equals who respond to each others’ work
and together create an authentic social context for interaction and learning
(e.g., Mittan, 1989). Practically, students are able to participate actively in
learning while getting responses from real, perhaps multiple, readers in a
nonthreatening situation (Medonca and Johnson, 1994). Moreover, students
not only benefit from seeing how readers understand their ideas and what
they need to improve, but also gain the skills necessary to critically analyze
and revise their own writing (Leki, 1990; Zhang, 1995).
On the negative side, the fact that learners are rhetorically inexperienced
means that they may focus heavily on sentence level problems rather than
ideas and organization. Moreover, peers are not trained teachers and their
comments may be vague and unhelpful, or even overly critical and sarcastic
(Leki, 1990). There is also some concern that students from collectivist
cultures may be more concerned about the need to emphasize a positive
group climate than critically appraise peers’ writing, making feedback less
beneficial (Carson and Nelson, 1996). This is clear in the disappointment
expressed by one of F. Hyland’s (2000: 41) respondents:
Just now I asked Chan for some comments for my presentation. Well, he said “oh
it’s all right.” Nothing important, nothing useful. Maybe he didn’t like to comment.
 Peer feedback 199

Table 7.4: Potential pros and cons of peer feedback

Advantages
Active learner participation
Authentic communicative context
Nonjudgmental environment
Alternative and authentic audience
Writers gain understanding of
reader needs
Reduced apprehension about
writing
Development of critical reading
skills
Reduces teacher’s workload
Disadvantages
Tendency to focus on surface forms
Potential for overly critical comments
Cultural reluctance to criticize and judge
Students unconvinced of comments’
value
Weakness of reader’s knowledge
Students may not use feedback in
revisions
Students may prefer teacher feedback

Especially for Chinese, for Chinese people you know, they seldom comment on
some other people’s work. . . . I think it is not good. I want to know more about how
I done.

Research on the effectiveness of peer response in ESL contexts has found

that writers do make some use of peers’ comments in their revisions, al-
though L2 proficiency, prior experience, and group dynamics are likely
to influence the extent of this (e.g., Mendonca and Johnson, 1994). Ac-
tive collaboration and an openness to suggestions are important factors in
adopting comments for revision but, like L2 students’ revision practices
from any source of feedback, most revisions tend to be surface changes
(Connor and Asenavage, 1994). In discussions, students vary in their abil-
ity to maintain a task focus. Most talk is reported to be about peers’ drafts
(Villamil and de Guerrero, 1996), but authoritative reviewers, operating in
an evaluative and prescriptive mode, may tend to dominate the interactions
(Lockhart and Ng, 1995). Students themselves are rather ambivalent about
the quality of their peers’ suggestions and many both mistrust them and fear
ridicule due to their poor proficiency, generally preferring feedback from
teachers (Zhang, 1995). These perceptions and findings are summarized in
Table 7.4.

Reflection 7.13
What are your own views of peer feedback? What circumstances do you think
are required to make it work successfully? Would you use it in an ESL writing
class? Why? / Why not?
200 Responding to student writing

Forms of peer response

Peer response can take a number of different forms and occur at various
stages in the writing process. Most typically it consists of assigning students
to groups of two, three, or four who exchange completed first drafts and
give comments on each others’ work before they revise them. This normally
occurs during class time and can take up to an hour to complete, especially
if readers are asked to produce written comments and writers are required
to provide written responses to these. Some peer sessions involve the free
exchange of reactions to a piece of work, but L2 learners typically work
with a set of peer review guidelines to help them focus on particular aspects
of the writing and the conventions of the genre.
Peer review need not be confined to first drafts. Students can collaborate
in pre-writing tasks to generate ideas for an assignment before any draft-
ing is done, commenting on each other’s brainstorms and outlines to raise
awareness of the rhetorical issues involved and to develop writing strate-
gies (Flower, 1994). The goal here is to encourage negotiation of rhetorical
planning by involving a reader, drawing on Vygotskian ideas of activity in
the “zone of proximal development” and the intersubjective construction
of goals. Alternatively, peers can contribute to later stages of the teaching-
writing cycle. As they develop their knowledge of relevant features of con-
text, system, content, and genre, learners are better able to intervene with
helpful advice. In early drafts they may comment on the clarity and rele-
vance of the ideas and their coherence for readers or the appropriateness of
contextual factors such as the role the writer is adopting or the relationship
being established with the reader through the choice of particular features.
At later stages they might address elements of grammar and expression
and how the text is structured rhetorically to effectively present the writer’s
message.
In many peer group sessions students give their paper to another student
for comment, although some teachers prefer writers to bring copies for each
member of the group to read so that they get a range of responses. Other
variations include conducting discussions of a student’s paper online as a
synchronous chat exercise or asynchronously through email. In some cases
students read their own papers aloud while others listen, or a member of the
group reads another student’s paper aloud. However, while reading aloud
can provide additional oral-aural practice with considerable motivation to
attend and comprehend, many ESL writers are uncomfortable with this
public presentation of their work and others may lack the speaking-listening
skills to benefit from it. Respondents can provide comments orally after the
reading, or they can give written comments to the student privately.
 Peer feedback 201

Reflection 7.14
Which type of peer feedback do you think is likely to be most effective? Think
about it in the context of a writing class you are familiar with or with students
you are likely to teach. Do you think the same type would be effective for all
stages of writing and all kinds of written genres?

It should also be noted that not all peer response occurs in classrooms.
Many students report independently seeking help from classmates, friends,
or family who are either native English speakers or at higher levels of pro-
ficiency than themselves. More importantly, such informants are typically
of equal status and in a relationship with them that is socially close and re-
laxed, so that constructive criticism can be freely given and correction can
be supplemented by detailed discussion. This journal extract from a mature
Taiwanese student illustrates the value of such feedback.
I got the long essay yesterday. There were some mistakes and some sentences were
not clear. I didn’t ask my husband to revise the first draft, so there were lots of
grammar mistakes. When I finish an essay, I usually give it to my husband. My
husband corrects my mistakes and points out which sentence is not clear. I think
it is good for me to learn how to write a correct essay. Sometimes I have good
ideas, but I cannot explain very well in English. My husband can give me advices
to improve my writing. I always discuss some sentences with my husband and he
teaches me grammar. In this way, I think I can improve my English ability. I like
this kind of feedback. I can have more ideas about my essay during the discussion.
(F. Hyland, 2001)

Reflection 7.15
Not all teachers are comfortable with the kind of informal peer feedback dis-
cussed by Hyland that occurs outside of their control. In fact, the journal entry
above was actually written by the student in response to her teacher’s disapproval
of this assistance. Do you think it is more important for the teacher to control
feedback in order to get an idea of their students’ abilities and improvements
or to encourage this kind of autonomy and out-of-class feedback?

Integrating peer review into a writing course

Peer review sessions are generally more effective as an integral part of
a course rather than isolated occurrences. By informing learners from the
202 Responding to student writing

What Is Peer Editing?

Peer editing means responding with appreciation and positive criticism to your
classmates’ writing. It is an important part of this course because it can:
• Help you become more aware of your reader when writing and revising
• Help you become more sensitive to problems in your writing and more confident
in correcting them

Rules for Peer responding:

• Be respectful of your classmate’s work
• Be conscientious – read carefully and think about what the writer is trying to say
• Be tidy and legible in your comments
• Be encouraging and make suggestions
• Be specific with comments

Remember: You do not need to be an expert at grammar. Your best help is as a

reader and that you know when you have been interested, entertained, persuaded,
or confused

Figure 7.4: A peer review introduction sheet.

outset that peer response will be required and utilizing it frequently and
consistently, teachers can emphasize its importance to students, ensure that
it is taken seriously, and reduce anxieties that individuals may have about
sharing their writing. Sufficient time should be built into the course to allow
for both written response and oral discussion of the reviews and a clear
structure for grouping students adopted. Some teachers allow students to
self-select their groups and this seems a good practice until a better idea of
their writing abilities is gained. Later, pairs can be based on their ability to
offer mutual assistance, with one participant of slightly higher proficiency
than the other.
To effectively integrate peer response into a writing course, the purpose
of the activity needs to be clearly stated and rules for responding suggested.
Students need to feel comfortable about sharing their work and collaborat-
ing, and time should be taken to ensure they see the activity as nonjudg-
mental and as a means of learning to consider readers’ needs in expressing
their purposes. An introductory information sheet can be a useful way of
outlining such advantages and purposes (Figure 7.4).

Reflection 7.16
Are these general rules for peer response adequate and comprehensive? What
would you add to them? How would you ensure that they were observed?
 Peer feedback 203

Another way of integrating peer response tasks into a course is for teach-
ers to collect and read all feedback, perhaps responding to it with a brief
comment or even assigning a grade on its quality and substance. Writ-
ers themselves can be asked to write a brief reaction to the comments they
have received, including whether, and how, they have incorporated them into
their subsequent draft. Developing peer response skills takes time, however,
and students cannot be expected to assume full responsibility for feedback
immediately or to overcome their doubts about the quality of their peers’
comments. Most importantly, integrating peer response into a writing course
involves patience and a supportive environment in which students can take
increasing responsibility for their interactions and feedback.

Peer response training

Because L2 students generally lack the language competence of native
speakers who can often react intuitively to their classmates’ papers, peer
response practices are most effective if they are modeled, taught, and con-
trolled. Berg (1999), for instance, found that peer response training led
to significantly more meaning changes and higher marks on L2 writers’
second drafts regardless of proficiency levels, and the peer response lit-
erature strongly advocates teacher input prior to the first feedback session
(e.g., Carson and Nelson, 1996; Leki, 1990; Lockhart and Ng, 1995). While
appropriate schemata for responding partly comes from students’ under-
standing of appropriate genre, system, and context which they develop in
the early stages of a writing cycle, they also need strategies for reading and
responding: knowing what to look for and how to comment on it.
Training in peer response practices can begin by students working on their
own papers with a reflective note to the teacher explaining what he or she
was trying to do in a paper, what worked, what didn’t, what was learned, and
so on (Reid, 1993: 210). Alternatively, students can be given a short list of at-
tributes to look for in their papers. This may involve checking for a particular
rhetorical feature that was the subject of a scaffolding task from the model-
ing stage, such as topic sentences, transition paragraphs, problem-solution
patterns. If the list is submitted with the draft, then the student begins to
learn to take responsibility for carefully reading his or her paper. Asking
students to write down their reflections can increase their understandings of
the genre and the writing process, focusing their attention on texts, encour-
aging revision, and providing them with ways of proofreading and editing
texts.
204 Responding to student writing

Building on this self-awareness training, students can watch videos of

peer discussions taken in other classes (Carson and Nelson, 1996), or ex-
amine transcripts of peer review sessions (Lockhart and Ng, 1995). In ad-
dition, explicit instruction can be given in the “language of response” and
expressions students would find useful to compliment, suggest, and mit-
igate criticism. Most importantly, students need experience in exploring
“safe” essays written by students from other classes, either in groups or as a
whole class, following a list of questions that elicit a general response and
some suggestions. This training in response strategies can follow general
directives on how to approach the task (a) or address specific issues in the
papers (b):

(a) What to look for when reading your partner’s draft:

r Clarity – Are you given all the information you need in a clear
order?
r Interest – Does the paper interest you?
r Effectiveness – Does the paper make an impact on you?
r Accuracy – Are there any errors of spelling, grammar, definitions?
(b) Try to answer these questions as you read:
r What is the main idea that the writer is trying to express in this
paper?
r Are there any parts that do not relate to the main idea?
r Which part of the paper do you like the best?
r Find two or three places where you would like more explanations,
examples, or details.
r Did you lose the flow of writing at any point or find places where
the writer jumped suddenly to another idea?
r Did the beginning capture your attention and make you want to
read on? Why or why not? (Raimes, 1992: 64)

Another approach is to give students a number of core response prin-

ciples which they can build on through the course with increasing de-
tail on what they like and dislike and greater explanation on how their
suggestions will improve the text. Mittan (1989) suggests the following
principles:
r Offer a positive response and encouragement to the writer.
r Identify the purpose and main points of the text.
r Direct questions to the writer.
r Offer suggestions.
 Peer feedback 205

It is worth noting that students often unconsciously follow the feedback

patterns of their teachers (Connor and Asenavage, 1994), adopting the re-
sponse forms they are exposed to: prioritizing form or function, questioning
or informing, providing rules or making suggestions. Recognizing that they
implicitly model response patterns should encourage teachers to offer clear,
positive, and focused feedback.

Reflection 7.17
Do you think these forms of training are likely to overcome the reservations
some students have about the quality of feedback they get from their peers? How
would you address the reluctance of students from some cultures to engage in
collaborative activities of this kind?

Peer response sheets

Response sheets help structure peer review activities by providing guidance
on what participants should look for as they read. Again, these can be more
or less specific, but the objective is to build students’ responding skills
and to focus their attention on relevant issues. However, while students
should have precise instructions and clear directions concerning the tasks
they are expected to complete, some teachers believe that if such sheets
are too directive, students’ behavior will simply mirror their own priorities,
effectively resulting in an indirect form of “appropriation.” However, many
L2 learners need a focus for their interaction, particularly in the early stages
of peer feedback activities, although these constraints can be gradually
relaxed and the students given greater autonomy as their confidence and
metacognitive awareness of writing increases.
Response sheets can therefore provide a valuable form of indirect instruc-
tion about good writing practices and genre formats. They can be written
by students but are more commonly provided by teachers, often with space
for writers to specify particular areas they would like the reader to comment
on. The format of response sheets can vary greatly and the precise focus
will depend on the proficiency of the students, their experience of peer re-
viewing, the stage in the writing process, and perhaps the particular features
that the teacher wishes to stress. Appendix 7.2 shows an example response
sheet for a first draft of a research essay and Figure 7.5 illustrates a more
interactive response sheet for an argument paper.
206 Responding to student writing

Peer Response Sheet: Argument

Author’s Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Title of Draft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Write three questions you would like your responder to answer.
1
2
3
Responder’s Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Read the questions above. Listen to the author read his/her draft aloud. Read
the paper again if you want to. Then write a response for the author.
Author’s Reflection
Read the response you have received carefully. Reflect on it and write what you
have learned and what you intend to do next below.

Figure 7.5: Peer response sheet for an argument essay.

Mittan (1989: 216–17) suggests the following principles for designing a

peer response sheet:
1. Begin with clear instructions as to the purpose, audience, and proce-
dure for completing the form, for example:

Your purpose in answering these questions is to give an honest and helpful

response to your partner’s draft and to suggest ways to make his/her writing
better. Before beginning, be sure to read the writing carefully, then respond
to each of the following questions. Be as specific as possible; refer directly
to your partner’s paper by paragraph number.

2. Limit the sheet to one page. The amount of white space will help
determine the length of response.
3. Use questions that follow this format:
r Give encouragement. What do you like most in this writing?
r Identify the purpose or main idea. In your own words state what
you think the focus is.
r Questions and suggestions. Which part needs to be developed?
How could the writer help you understand this idea better?
4. Vary the question types. These can include open-ended types, re-
formulation of ideas, selecting the most appropriate response from
several choices, a letter to the writer.

In sum, there are good reasons to believe that peer feedback can be
effective in improving second language writing, although it is uncertain
which are the most effective forms, how frequently it should be used, how
much training and guidance should be provided, and how best to group
 Summary and conclusion 207

Table 7.7: Principles of effective peer response

1. Make peer response an integral part of the course.

2. Model the process.
3. Build peer response skills progressively throughout the term.
4. Structure the peer response task.
5. Vary peer response activities.
6. Hold students accountable for giving feedback and
for considering the feedback they receive.
7. Consider individual student needs.
8. Consider logistical issues, including
• the size and composition of groups
• the mechanics of exchanging papers
Source: Ferris and Hedgcock, 1998: 178.

students and encourage participation. Ferris and Hedgcock (1998) offer

general guidelines, given in Table 7.7.

Summary and conclusion

Feedback is central to learning to write in a second language. Not only can

it provide writers with a sense of audience and sensitize them to the needs
of readers, but it offers an additional layer of scaffolding to extend writing
skills, promote accuracy and clear ideas, and develop an understanding of
written genres. The three kinds of feedback discussed in this chapter each
have their advantages and possible drawbacks, and teachers might use them
in tandem to offer students the best of all worlds. The key points of the
chapter are:
r Teachers should ask students for their feedback preferences at the begin-
ning of the course and address these in their responses.
r The response practices the teacher intends to use in the course should be
explained at the outset. This should include the focus of the feedback that
will be given on particular drafts, any codes that will be used, whether
written, oral, or peer forms will be employed, and so on.
r Expectations concerning student responses to feedback need to be clearly
explained at the beginning so that students understand what is required
from them in terms of followup to feedback.
r Teachers should provide both margin and end comments in their written
feedback if time allows and, remembering that students may find com-
ments vague and difficult to act on, seek a balance of praise and doable
suggestions for revision.