English Language Teaching - Peer feedback or response in writing class

1. Peer Feedback or Response
in Writing Class
ELT 612 PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES IN LANGUAGE TEACHING 2
SEMESTER 2/2018
MR. PAKORN BOONMEE
MR. NUTTAPONG RUTAMORNCHAI

2. Survey: The Activity of Peer
Feedback in a Writing Coursebook

3. Survey: The Activity of Peer
Feedback in a Writing Coursebook
 Survey Chapter 10: Opinion Essays in
Longman Academic Writing Series 3 to
find out whether the writer states the
activity of peer feedback or not. How?
 Look at Appendix F to understand
concepts of peer feedback.

4. Peer Feedback: Overview
 The idea of students receiving feedback on their writing from their
peers developed from L1 proves 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’ understanding 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.

5. Peer Feedback: Pros and Cons

6. Peer Feedback: Pros and Cons

7. Forms of Peer Response
 Peer response can take a number of different forms and occur at
various stages in the writing process.
 Assign students to groups and give comment to each other
 Exchange completed first draft and give comment on each
others’ work before they revise them
 It might take an hour to complete the task
 Peer review need not be confined to first drafts. Students can
collaborate in pre-writing tasks to generate ideas for an
assignment before any drafting is done.
 Commenting on each other’s brainstorms and outlines to raise
awareness of the rhetorical issue involved and to develop writing
strategies
 These stages may occur interchangeably.

8. Peer Response Training
Raimes, 1992
a) What to look for when reading your partner’s draft:
• Clarity – Are you given all the information you need in a clear
order?
• Interest – Does the paper interest you?
• Effectiveness – Does the paper make an impact on you?
• Accuracy – Are there any errors of spelling, grammar,
definitions?

9. Peer Response Training
Raimes, 1992
b) Try to answer these questions as you read:
• What is the main idea that the writer is trying to express in this
paper?
• Are there any parts that do not relate to the main idea?
• Which part of the paper do you like the best?
• Find two or three places where you would like more
explanations, examples, or details
• Did you lose the flow of writing at any point or find places
where the writer jumped suddenly to another idea?
• Did the beginning capture your attention and make you want
to read on? Why or why not?

10. Peer Response Training
 Mittan (1989) suggests the following principles.
 Offer a positive response and encouragement to the writer
 Identify the purpose and main points of the text
 Direct questions to the writer
 Offer suggestions

11. Peer Response Sheets
 Mittan (1989) suggests the following principles for designing a peer
response worksheet.
 1. Begin with clear instructions as to the purpose, audience, and
procedure for completing the form.
 2. Limit the sheet to one page. The amount of white space will
help determine the length of response.

12. Peer Response Sheets
 3. Use questions that follow this format:
Give encouragement. What do you like most in this writing?
Identify the purpose or main idea. In your own words state
what you think the focus is.
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, reformulation of ideas, selecting the most
appropriate response from several choices, a letter to the
writer. See example page 210.

13. 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 tasks.
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,
1. The size and composition of groups
2. The mechanics of exchanging papers

14. Summary and Conclusion
 Peer response can be helpful in providing learners with an
alternative audience and a different source of commentary, but
students may need to be trained to respond effectively in these
contexts.
 Students should be encouraged to reflect on the feedback they
receive from any source by keeping journal s or writing summaries
in which they respond to the comment.

15. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give and
Evaluate Peer Feedback
 PROBLEMS TO BE ADDRESSED
 After trying out peer review for two semesters, the outcome
had not been satisfactory.
 Students thought that giving feedback to peers was difficult.
 Sometimes they did not appreciate comments from their peers.
 Few of the peer comments were adopted into their final drafts.

16. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give
and Evaluate Peer Feedback
 PARTICIPANTS
 Thirty non-English majors
 First-year students in a fundamental writing course at Hong
Kong University
 6.o -6.5 IELTS scores
 No experience in peer review activities in writing class

17. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give
and Evaluate Peer Feedback
 WRITING COURSE
 It was a compulsory writing course for first-year students.
 The aim was to develop writing abilities in various genres.
 The course was three hours long, once a week.
 Fifty minutes were allotted for peer review activities.
 The first three weeks were allotted to train how to peer-review.

18. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give
and Evaluate Peer Feedback
 THE THREE-WEEK PEER REVIEW TRAINING WORKSHOP
 Week 1: The modeling stage
 Week 2: The exploring stage
 Week 3: The consciousness-raising stage

19. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give
and Evaluate Peer Feedback
 WEEK 1: THE MODELING STAGE
 Introduce definitions of peer review.
 State the objectives of peer review training.
 Introduce Min (2005)’s four-step procedure.
 Introduce types of errors.

20. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give
and Evaluate Peer Feedback
 MIN (2005)’S FOUR-STEP PROCEDURE
 The aim is to explain the nature of errors.
 The aim is also to provide feasible suggestions.
 The result is that writers can improve their next drafts.

21. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give
and Evaluate Peer Feedback
 MIN (2005)’S FOUR-STEP PROCEDURE
 1. Clarifying Ex. Do you want to say . . .?
 2. Identifying Ex. Do you realize if the sentence is
related to the topic?
 3. Explaining Ex. You may be wrong here because . . .
 4. Giving suggestion Ex. Why don’t you change from . . . to . . ?

22. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give
and Evaluate Peer Feedback
 TYPES OF ERRORS
 Treatable Errors vs. Non-Treatable Errors
There are a flock of birds on the sky.
The books on the table is mine.
 Content Errors vs. Language Errors
Lack of Supporting Ideas / Irrelevant Details / etc.
Parts of Speech / Subject-Verb Agreement
Ans. Treatable Errors
Ans. Non-Treatable Errors
Ans. Language Errors
Ans. Content Errors

23. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give
and Evaluate Peer Feedback
 WEEK 2: THE EXPLORING STAGE
 Students practiced the four-step procedure with authentic
examples.
 They had to identify errors, explain them, and provide
appropriate suggestions for modifications.
 They discussed the quality of their reviews.

24. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give
and Evaluate Peer Feedback
 WEEK 3: THE CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING STAGE
 As reviewers, they coded comments into three aspects.
1. Global Area / Local Area
 Content / Idea Development / Organization / etc.
 Mechanics / Grammar / Punctuation / etc.
2. Revision-Oriented Nature / Non-Revision-Oriented Nature
3. Evaluation / Clarification / Suggestion / Alteration
 As writers, they analyzed how much feedback they used for
revision and why some feedback could not be used.
Ans. Global Area
Ans. Local Area

25. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give
and Evaluate Peer Feedback

26. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give
and Evaluate Peer Feedback

27. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give
and Evaluate Peer Feedback
 REFLECTION FROM 30-MINUTE POST-WORKSHOP INTERVIEWS
 “I have learned how to give appropriate peer comments to my
classmates. Prior to the workshop, I thought “Well done” or
“Need to improve grammar” was good-enough peer
feedback.”
The participants were positive about the use of peer review
activities in the writing course.
 The training of how to give effective peer feedback and how to
evaluate how successful peer feedback was incorporated into
their own subsequent revisions.

28. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give
and Evaluate Peer Feedback
 REFLECTION FROM 30-MINUTE POST-WORKSHOP INTERVIEWS
 “The training in giving peer feedback makes us understand that
if we can judge other compositions, it is likely for us to develop
a judicious mind in critiquing our own work in a similar manner.”
Students who were critical about their peers’ work would become
more critical of their own writing because of editing and revising
skills acquired in the workshop.

29. Research - A Peer Review Training
Workshop: Coaching Students to Give
and Evaluate Peer Feedback
 REFLECTION FROM 30-MINUTE POST-WORKSHOP INTERVIEWS
 However, students might have spent extra time analyzing the
received peer feedback on top of their busy schedule of
coursework.
 The success largely rests on students’ belief in the usefulness of
peer feedback, their linguistic competence, and teacher
intervention and support.

30. Activity – According to Mittan (1989)’s principles for
designing a peer response worksheet, does the peer
review worksheet in Appendix F follow the principles?
How?
 1. Begin with clear instructions as to the purpose, audience, and procedure
for completing the form.
 2. Limit the sheet to one page. The amount of white space will help
determine the length of response.
 3. Use questions to give encouragement (“What do you like most in this
writing?”), to identify the purpose or main idea, and to give questions and
suggestions.
 4. Vary the question types. These can include open-ended types,
reformulation of ideas, selecting the most appropriate response from
several choices, a letter to the writer.

32. References
 Hyland, K. (2003). Second Language Writing. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
 Lam, R. (2010). A Peer Review Training Workshop: Coaching
Students to Give and Evaluate Peer Feedback. TESL Canada
Journal, 27(2), 114-127.
 Oshima, A. & Hogue, A. (2013). Longman Academic Writing Series
3: Paragraphs to Essays. New Jersey: Pearson Education.