Luận văn applying peer feedback in letter writing

LIST OF FIGURES/ TABLES Figure 1: Students’ percepbons on peer feedback m general Table 1: Students’ perceptions on the benefits of peer feedback Table 2: Students’ perceptions on the di

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

c

NGUYEN IA NGQC ANIL

APPLYING PEER FEEDBACK IN LETTER WRITING: CHALLENGES AND

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT

{Áp dụng hình thức nhận xét bạn học trong luyện tập kỹ năng viết thu:

Những khú khăn và giải pháp để xuất)

Tield: English Teaching Methodology (applied program)

Code: 8140331 01

TIANOI - 2018

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, IIANOL UIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDLES:

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

KHE X ĐK ME DORE

NGUYEN HA NGOC ANH

APPLYING PEER FEEDBACK IN LETTER WRITING: CIIALLENGES AND

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT

(Ấp dụng hình thức nhận xét bạn học trong luyện tập kỹ nang viết thư:

Những khó khăn và giải phap dé xudt)

Vield: Lnglish Leaching Methodology (applied program)

Code: 8140231.01

Supervisor: Dr Pham Lan Anh

HANOI, 2018

DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY

Tam aware of and understand the University's policy on plagiarism and I declare that this thesis is my own work in the [ulfillmeut of the requirement for lie Degree of

Master at laculty of Postgraduate Studies, University of Languages and Intemational

Studies, Vieltam National Umversity, execpt for quolalions, and citations which have

been acknowledged

NGUYEN HA NGOc ANH

I would like to deeply thank Dr Huynh Anh Tuan, support staffs and librarians

al the Facully of Posigraduate Studies who arc kind and helpfut

T wish lo express my sincere gratitude to my collcagues who helped me to find

the necessary materials and gave me constructive comments

1 would like to show my appreciation for our students involved in my study for their enthusiasm and patience

Finally, from bottom of my heart, I thank my parents, my beloved sister and my

friends for their love and encouragements

LIST OF FIGURES/ TABLES

Figure 1: Students’ percepbons on peer feedback m general

Table 1: Students’ perceptions on the benefits of peer feedback

Table 2: Students’ perceptions on the disadvantages of peer written feedback

Table 3: Difficulties that students encounter when they do peer written feedback

Table 4: Students’ follow — up activities after receiving peer feedback

Table 5 Students’ expectations of using peer feedback in the future

Table 6: Students’ opinions about solutions to overcome difficulties in giving peer feedback

ABSTRACT

Although wriling is an important component of laryguage, il is wot casy Lor

learners to achieve the high level of writing and review other's work Therefore, a number of studies were done for peer feedback in writing Nonetheless, this thesis is

concerned with student's difficulties in giving peer fecdback in writing lcllors ol! application because it is regarded as the initial step to show their talent and experience

aa well as Lo leave the first, impression on recrutters This thesis was condnucled in an

English center in Hanoi with 50 pre-intermediate university students ‘The data of the research were collected by means of questionnaires, and interviews The results

revealed the altitude of studsnis toward peer feedback as well as some difficulliss they

had when they gave peer feedback in letter writing Some solutions to the problem were also suggested in the study with the hope that students could overcome those problems

Keywords: peer feedhack; letter writing; letter of application

TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY

5 The significance of the study - - - 3 x ẽ ố.ẽẽẻ

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: The Literature Review

L Theoretical tramework

5

1 Teaching writing skills

2 Teaching letter writing skills and letter of application

3 Eecdback and [sedback im wHlling, có cọ n0 0e

4.1 The importance of peer feedback in writing

4.2 Types of feedback in writing

5 Data analysis procedute sec

1.1.1.3 Students’ perceptions on the disadvantages of peer feedback

1.1.2 Students’ difficulties that they encountered when giving peer written feedback

1.1.3 Studenix’ follow — up activities after receiving peer feedback

vi

28

1.1.4, Students’ expectations of using peer feedback in the future

1.1.5 Students’ opinions abiad solutions to overcome difficulties in giving peer

1 Recapilulations of main findings 2

2 The implication for teaching - - - 43

A, Suggestions for further stuđies, 0k4

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

English seems to have been adopted as the language of globalization these days

as the language of global cullure and the international economy (Graddol, D 1997) Therefore, fluency in the four English macro skills seems to be one of the important

factors in order to meet those requirements and to master the language More

specifically, two productive skills (speaking and writing) will be the main factors Lo decide the ability to use language and writing skills are regarded as the most difficult ones Numan (1989) argues that writing is an extremely difficult cognitive activity which requires tlic learner to have control over various factors Morcover, the writing is viewed in terms of isolated units such as orthography, sentence structure, and discourse level structure (Matsuda, 2006) It comprises numerous skills and all types of knowledge from critical thinking, comprehension, problem — solving, reflection to revision In other words, writing is a way to help people express their own thought,

define themselves and the world, and clarify their ideas and knowledge as well as

reinforce their grammar structure and vocalsulary

Although strong writing skills may enhance students’ chances for success

(Alexander, 2008), the majority of Vietnamese students lack proficiency im language Lo

become successful upon graduation, Despite the fact that they spond years studying English, from primary to tertiary level, they are not capable of being fluent in English

As a consequences, [resh graduate students carmot create good impressions lor recruiters because of their English proficiency More specifically, they may fail from the profile selection round and a letter of application is always considered the first

It can be said that Ictter writing skills play an essential rele in contributing to

students’ initial success in the society of modernization and industrialization llowever,

writing a letter does not seem an easy task for most students A lack of letter writing

1

skills is caused by various factors Several researchers inform that the absence of feedback is also a reason for the problems of poar writing skills

Thore are several kinds of feedback such as teacher's feedback, peer feedback which seem to be effective tools for students to improve their skills Most teachers use teacher feedback as the single mode in their class because it saves time Nonetheless, Liu et al., 2001 shows that peer interaction is crucial to the improvement of students’ learning because it allows students to construct knowledge through social sharing and interaction Most students may feel confused and have difficulties in giving feedback to others because letter writing is practical which requires the use of authentic language Because of the importance of letter writing in students’ future career and the enormous benefits of peer leedback for improving wriling skills, T decided to carry out the sludy emttled "Applying peer feedback in letter writing: challenges and suggestions for

Objectives:

This aim of the research is reflected through the following objectives Firstly, iL explores the attitude and perception of students toward peer written feedback Secondly, it identifies the difficulties they encounter when they do peer written feedback in letter writing Afler analysis, some reasons causing poor wriling might be discovered, then several potential solutions have been proposed to help them improve

their writing letter skills

tờ

3 Research questions

1, What are the perceptions of students on poor feedback?

2, What are the difficulties students often encounter when they give peer written feedback?

3 What are possible solutions lo help students overcome those problens?

4 The scope of the study

Due to the time constraint, the length of the thesis and the researcher's

knowledge, this study only focuses on studsnis' difficuliies in letier writing However,

to mect the demand for student's future job, this study focuses much on formal letter

writing, especially letter of application In addition, it is necessary for students to do

peer written feedback in writing lessons in class so that the teacher can effectively take

control and students can make progress in writing skills and become more critical writers To improve students’ writing skills, a number of activities and strategies can be proposed, however, the sludy mainly focuses on the challenges that students face with when they do peer written feedback in order to provide some suggestions for

improvement

5 Significance of the study

The study provides a deeper and crilical understanding of students’ difficulties

when they do peer written feedback Although the study was carried out in an English center in Hanoi, iL is betieved to be helpful for university students in Hanoi in general The results of the study will motivate other researchers to investigate other aspects related to writing skills l'urthermore, the researcher hopes that students will have more

interests and motivation im letter wriling lo acquire proficiericy in this skill

6 Methodology

The study adopis a qualilalive approach for data collection and data analysis Ta order to obtain adequate information for the study, the survey questionnaire and interviews were applied The questionnaire was designed to deliver to 50 university students learning al an English center in Hanoi, And then, 15 students randomly selected were interviewed ‘I'he purpose of the two methods is to explore the perceptions of sindents toward pecr feedback and identily the difficulties the students encounter when they do peer written feedback in letter writing as well as their solutions

to overcome these problems

7 Organization of the thesis

The thesis is divided into three main parts: Introduction, Development, and Conclusion

The first part is Introduction It gives an overview of the study, specifying reasons for choosing the lopie, the aim, objectives, and res

the methods of the study It also provides the significance and scope of the study

ch questions as well as

The second part is - Development It consists of three chapters

Chapter 1 is Literature review and theoretical framework

Chapter 2 is Methodology It describes in detail the research methodology which

comprises the information of the participants, instrumentation, data collection and data

analysis procedure

Chapter 3 is Results and Discussion This chapter shows the analysis and discussion of the findings

The last part is the Conclusion It summaries the main findings of the study At

the same time, it indicates implications for teaching, the limitations and suggestions for further studies.

particular

I Theoretical framework

1 Teaching writing skills

Writing skills play an essential role in modem life because of their purposes of

communication and business Walsh (2010) demonstrates that the imporlance of

writing cannot be denicd due to its extensive use in higher cducation and the workplace Furthermore, writing is the best supportive tool to assist people to develop

as well as communication skdlls It

their ability using language and academic skills

requires writers to gain enough knowledge of writing (topic and skills) and other skills (analyzing, synthesizing and evalualing) so as lo achieve the goals Indeed, writing encourages students to engage with the text to deepen their understanding of the content and link them to prior learning experiences Therefore, according to Tribble (1996) & Brown (2001)," Written products are often the result of thinking" As a result, they developed theories of two main approaches to teaching witting, process and product approach Ilowever, they vary in the sense of principles and techniques on the

one hand, arul they demonstrate morils and drawbacks on the other.

Product approach

Product approach is considered a traditional approach in which students imitate

a model text and are expected to follow the guided stops to construct a new piece of writing ‘he aim of this approach is aiding students to become aware of grammar, meaningful punctuality, use layout correctly and develop a range of vocabulary As Pincas (1982) claims, "writing is primarily about linguistic knowledge, looking at the appropriate use of vocabulary, syntax and ochesive devices" Picas also shows four slages of product approach before studenls produce the end-product for evaluation, namely Familiarization (students have to study the model text and highlight features of genre), Controlled writing (students are allowed to do controlled exercises to revise grammatical features and related vocabulary}, Guided writing and Free writing (Students choose from the choice of comparable writing tasks and apply what they

have been langht to produce the product) Alihough leamers can improve their

accuracy of language through this approach, it is obvious that creativity is decreased because the model texts inspire students to use the same structure in different settings and apply the same format

Process approach

The Process approach mainly focuses on students’ ideas for writing rather than their product (Tompkins, 1990) Furthermore, the strength of this process is developing students’ ability to generate and present their own ideas to their target audiences It can

be a way for teachers to discover the student's new ideas, languages and expressions as

Zamal (1982) claims that the act of writing is mamly "a process of discovery" In spite

of its strength, there still have been some limitations Llyland (2003) points out three weaknesses of process approach from a social perspective Firstly, this approach focuses on personal thinking which is regarded as a decontextualized skill but less pays attention to grammar and the final product Secondly, students may find it hard to give

focdback if they arc not familiar with revision Thirdly, it could be time — consuming

6

because students are not provided structures of the target text types and have to rewrite

several times based on teacher's comments As a consequence, teachers need to spend time grading students! writing

2 Teaching letter writing skills and letter of application

A letter serves several purposes for both personal and professional communication The right letter can make all the differences from getting the right job

to closing the sale, from obtaining a scholarship to offering, thanks gracefully All in all, it is a means of communication among people, therefore, it has its own principles in addition to the general writing principles: the arrangement of the address: the date and its posilion; the greetings; the body of the letter and ils purpose, the closing paragraph and the writers’ expectation from the addressee; the complimentary phrase and the signature Therelore, Fawcoll (2005) presents 7 stralogies (or better writing Firsily, keep it short and to the point Secondly, make it clear, concise, and logical Lhirdly, focus on the recipient's needs Fourthly, use simple and appropriate language Fifthly, use short sentences and paragraphs Sixthly, review and revise it Lastly, double check grammar and spelling

These rules above are general ones for all forms of letters, however, the letter of

the application shows its own features A letter of application is comprised of two parts: a Resume (sometimes called a vita, data sheet, or personal record) and a covering

letter The covering letter is to interest (he reader 1m the Lotal application The resume is

to present work-related information that an employer wants to know No matter what students write, it is necessary for them to keep those things in minds to make an impressive leller of application because il will be the [irst mpression for recruiters lo

decide on their qualification

3 Feedback and feedback in writing

Feedback is regarded as a formative assessment for students to know their

position in learning, Teachers, as well as learners, will have recognition of students! strengths and weaknesses in learning and guidelines for improvement It can be said that good feedback can support students have better achicvement in their leaning and establish specific leaming objectives in the future In brief, a good and appropriate

feedback can act as both an assessment [or leamimg as well as an assessment of

leaming (Lee, 2007) According to Ur (1996), and Littlewood (1981) feedback is defined as a means of information exchange to their performance Teachers and other

learners who concer others’ succes ss in learning will pass thew comments about

progress and show their errors for the purpose of guiding them to areas for betterment

The role of feedback in writing cannot be denied, so it is considered central ta

the development of writing skills The objective of corrcete feedback is to help the learners identify problems with their products and they can use the correct form after

feedback T should have an impact on students! attitude toward writing and their

motivation for leaming im the future (Grabe & Kaplan, 1996)

Because of the significance of feedback in student's writing, there are three

major areas of feedback which are synthesized aller a review of literature

Teacher's feedback

Many teachers sec their FB as an effective way of helping their students to excel

in their learning Indeed, thanks to those feedbacks, students have more support during the critical period of application of their recently acquired knowledge Meysam's report

from analysis of other researchers revealed that the effect of teacher — editing is

stronger in the reduction of errors in the students' revised dali, When providing feedback, different teachers may have different purposes when examining a student's

work At this point, teachers should use feedback Lo try 1o reduce the gap between the

student's understanding and actual performance and raise their expectations of theirs

(Carvalho, Santos, Conboy &Martins, 2014)

Self - assessment

Self assessment is defined as “the involvement of learners in making

judgments about their achievements and the outcome of their learning” (Boud and

Falchikov, 1989 as cited in Wride, 2017) It is no doubt that self assessment focuses

on student's learning autonomy or the student’s monitoring of their learning processes

Tndeed, iL enhances learners’ confidence to accept he errors and boost them Lo invest

effort into secking, and dealing with feedback information It can be said that self —

assessment brings a number of benefits for learners when they apply it to develop learmang, TL promoles better thoughtfulness and ant understanding, of the content on [he task given As a consequence, it can enhance lifelong learning for personal or

intellectual development or social competencies Despile those benefits, i, has several

limitations that students need to be aware of It can be an cbstacle for students who lack the necessary skills and confidence to assess themselves Furthermore, it can be

time-consuming if students are not self — conscious enough and do not accomplish it seriously

Peer feedback

The renovation of the education system in modem society leads to the shift of the teacher-centered model from learner-conlored in language teaching: henes the practice of peer feedback has become considerably more frequent in language classrooms Peer feedback is also referred to peer review, peer correction or peer editing which is defined as a process by which students assess the quality of and comment on other students’ work and provide feedback (Berget al., 2006 as cited in Alnasser, 2013) Therefore peer feedback allows leamers ta construct knowledge and make progress effectively and efficiently They can identify their strengths and weaknesses and know how to improve themselves Rollinson (2005) states that

9

students prefer peer feedback to teacher’s feedback due to experiencing less anxiety when they get corrected by own friends The classroom atmosphere gets friendlier and more supportive because students arc frec to exchange correction with cach other without using professional and formal language Cole & Chan (1994) supports that feedback may not only show the leamer's effort and performance but also increase

encouragement and create an active classroom atmosphere

4 Peer feedback in writing

41 The importance of peer feedback in writing

TL is obvious thal using peor fecdback offers several advantages for learners as well as teachers Kirstly, it enhances students leaming autonomy, cooperation,

interaction, and critical ibimking Paulus (1999) as cited in Min (2006) indicates that

peer editing in writing can do more than teacher's feedback because it can generate more comments on the content, organization, and vocabulary meanwhile teacher have enough time lo give comments on grammatical features Secondly, (he practice of peer review seems to be a useful instrument for learners to perceive their errors and develop

different language skills In other words, students are more careful with the details of a

piece of writing of either their own work or others In addition, they will learn how Lo

formulate and respond to feedback so as to strengthen their writing

42, Types of peer feedback in writing

Applying peer feedback in writing has become a dominant technique in recent years, especially when the communicative language leaching approach and learner centered model are taken priority, and peer review plays a more important role in leaming strategies Therefore, scholars developed different types of peer feedback Tn this rescarch, I mentioned two common types that I recognized that they are suitable

for most of the classroom teachings as Keh (1990) and Mangeldorf (1992) indicated in their studies

421, Verbal feedback

Verbal feedback can also be beneficial and it could be one of the quickest and

easiest forms of feedback All wonders can be cleared up or clarified by asking and answering It means that a number of direct elicitatians are exploded by asking students

to formulate the utterance and pausing to allow students to complete other’s utterance

It can be direct to the students who are targeted such as individuals or groups and also indirect to leamers who will listen and reflect on what has been said (Sultana, 2015)

As aresult, verbal commonts assist students (o [ind out what they have already known, identified gaps in knowledge and their learning goals In spite of these advantages, the

oral comments give some corlain drawbacks Firstly, iL is lime — consuming because iL

takes a long period of time for students and their peer(s) to exchange with each other Secondly, they may misunderstand their friend's ideas when they listen or do not catch

up with their specch to take note, as a consequence, they are not able to revise their

writing correctly

42.2 Written feedback Written feedback, even in its simplest form could be beneficial to all students,

including the English Language Leamers in the classroom A written form is a record

of students’ strengths and weaknesses and several suggestions for their improvement Generally, in most situations, students lack ideas for writing down in their peer's writing, they often leave a brief compliment like “good, very good, perfect or bad” It seems to discourage students because they do not know what needs to be developed or

improved, Altemalively, a productive comment should point out the advantages and

disadvantages in their writing At this point, Shepherd (2005) and Black et al (2004)

indicate that students achieve their leaming goals better when commenting focuses on

li

the specifics of the learning tasks and the student’s leaning issues According to the study by Cheah & Tee (2016) and Danielle MacDonald of the Leaming & Teaching Otfice’s Professional Development in Teaching Program, an effective written feedback consists of these following criteria Iirstly, written feedback should be specific and clear Secondly this feedback should be descriptive and explains clearly what aspects could be improved and provides specific suggestions for these areas to be strengthened Last but not least, positive feedback is preferred in several aspects

Written feedback also inchides a checklist which arade it easier for sludenis who are both writers and editors to revise their writing and undorstand what necded to be corrected Compared with written feedback, the checklist is much simpler because it is

a hst of all the things to be checked However, a fixed checklist should not be applied for all types of writing; it is necessary to grasp attemion on the critical features of the

ing peer wrilten feedback in letter writing,

Effective wriling requires a number of Ibings: a high degree of organization in the development of ideas and information; a high degree of accuracy so that there is no ambiguity of meaning: the use of complex grammatical devices for focus and

cunphasis; and a carcful choice of vocabulary, grammatical patterns, and sentence

structures” (Hedge 1988) According to grading criteria of British Couneil for General TELTS Wriling Task 1 (Letler writing), there are 4 main crileria: Task achievement,

Cohesion and coherence; Lexical resource, and Grammar range & Accuracy

12

Task achievement

Students need to cover all the requirements of the task and present a clear purpose, Moreover, they need to present, highlight and illustrate key featuros/ bullet points clearly and appropriately (It refers to form and content)

Cohesion and coherence

Students logically organize information and ideas ‘They use a range of linking devices effectively (It refers to organization and conjunction)

Lexical resource

Students are able to usc a wide/sufficient range of vocabulary flexibly to convey precise meanings Furthermore, their collocation and word choice are accuracy They produce rare errors in spelling and/or word formation:

Grammar range and Accuracy

Students apply a wide range of structures with Mexibility and a

uravy They have good control of grammar and punctuation with the majority of error free

sentences

TI Review of previnus studies

This part is the review of some typical researches which has some common ideas about peer feedback It consists of both foreign and Vietnamese studies After these reviews, it is hoped that new and different subject of peer feedback will be

discovered lo carry mul anew research or project

A study by Lim & Chen (2009) inveshgaled the Effectiveness of Peer Feedback

at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, a National University in

‘Taiwan, Republic of China ‘he study was carried out within 8 weeks of writing training and peer fecdback activities with 7 volunteers Afler 8 weeks of trainmg and analyzing survey questions, two researchers concluded that most language learners had

a positive attitude toward the pedagogy of peer feedback They also agreed that social

13

interaction through writing and peer feedback provided them with more inspiration and motivation in writing Additionally, they believed that with the benefits of linguistic

improvements in Englsh writing subject from pecr’s cooperative activities of

brainstorming, it should be applied in Linglish class more frequently

Another research by Kurt and Atay (2007) explored the effect of peer feedback

on writing anxiety It is used in the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAD) and T-test as instruments to analyze data Results of the study have shown

thal the peer feedback group experienced sigmficantly less anxiety than the teacher

feedback group Similar to the above study, this rescarch also revealed that peor feedback enhances the participants’ attitudes towards writing and has an impact on increasing motivalion through personal responsibility, and interest

A Vietnamese study by Pham Thi Hong (2016) investigated the practice peer

written feedback in paragraph writing skills armong the third-year students It seers to

be a deep study of this field because the researcher gave full aspects of peer feedback and issues of student's practice peer written feedback The questionnaire is always a popular instrument which is used in research Besides, she analyzed students’ writing to find out the areas that her students gave feedback to, and their tendency to provide suggestions and general comments The results indicated that grammar and vocabulary

were two areas in which students focused much on, and they cid not how to give useful

comment to help their peers to improve their writing In addition, students had troubles

in indicating the mistakes and in providing suggestions No matter what difficulties are, the study's findings prove that the peer written feedback can help students improve their writing skills to some extent

Tn conelusion, all the research mentioned above revealed several relaled fields

about peer feedback in writing However, there are few studies that explored the difficulties of students when they give peer feedback Additionally, paragraph writing

is preferred and taken priority, for that reason, my study created a difference that digs

14

into the difficulties of students when they give peer feedback in writing a letter of application Ilopefully, this study will be important for leamers and their peer to make

progress in letter writing

Summary:

In this part, previous related studies and the theoretical framework for the study

are presented, They were the basis for the researcher to design the questionnaire and

the interview questions with which the investigation of the students’ difficulties in

applying peer feedback was carried out

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

In the previous chapier, the Inerature related to the topic has heen reviewed as

a theoretical basis for the study This chapter provides the general description of how the study had been conducted In this chapter, five main categories are addressed

which are research setting, participants, data collection insbuments, research

procedure, and data analysis procedure

1 Research setting

The study was conducted at an English center located in Ilanoi It is specialized

in teaching English communication skills and TOBIC preparation for a certificate Students who aloud the couse vary from elementary, pre-intermediale lo intermediate level However, students are requested to do a placement test in order to assess the approximate level of 2 student's knowledge of Finglish grammar and usage before starting the course ‘There are 15 to 25 students in each class Both TOEIC and English communication courses centralize on the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) Depending on the requirements of cach course, teachers have their own teaching method and techniques iach class meets three times per week and

each lesson lasts 90 minutes

2, Participants

The participants selected for the research were 50 students of all three English communication classes, aged from 18 to 21 with the level of English being pre-

intermediate Most of them are university or college students and some of them are

high school graduate students Almost all the respondents paid much attention to English grammar and reading rather than to writing skill due ta the fact that the

eniance exam to universily mercly requires students’ knowledge of grammar and

reading As such, in spite of being good at grammar, they could not deliver an

understandable writing product to the readers

16

3 Thala collection instrument

3.1 Questionnaire

To collect data for this research, the questionnaire was regarded as the appropriate instrument The survey questionnaire was used to find aut the students? attitude toward peer written feedback and their difficulties in giving peer written feedback as well as their strategies in learning It was designed after a review of the

literature (Farrah, 2012; Hong, 2006, Tsui & Ng, 2000, Lee, 2008) In order to avoid

unnecessary misunderstanding and confusion from the respondents, the questionnaire

was translated into Vietnamese for the students in the most suitable way The

questionnaire lor (he students cousisled of 5 parts

Part 1: student’s general information

Part 2: Question 1, 2, 3 survey the siudents’ perceptions toward per [eedback

Part 3: Question 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 identify the difficulties of students when they

give peer feedback

Part 4: Question 11, 12, 13 find out students’ follow-up activities after receiving

In order to find out the root of the students’ problems in giving peer feedback, a

list of nme interview questions for the students was made on the basis of the results of

the questionnaire In this study, a semi-structured interview was used with the aim of

finding out how the difficulties revealed from the questionnaire affected the way they

give peer feedback in letter writing and whether there are any other difficulties In

addition, it explores some solutions students seek for when they have struggles in

17

giving peer feedback Moreover, it also discovers some follow-up activities that students did after writing sessions, therefore, the teacher can suggest some strategies to help them improve their skills All of the interviews were carried out in Victnamese to help the interviewees express their opinions more easily and exactly ‘The result of the interviews was as part of the database which the researcher used to make

modifications [he interviews were recorded under the permission of the interviewees

4 Data collection procedure

The procedures of data collection went through two main phases in chronological order The first phase is the questionnaire for students 50 sheets of the

quesionmaire were disiibuled (o the 50 students al an English center al the end of the

lesson when they finished giving peer feedback as required after 3 practice lessons and relunod m (ull Before making the requirement for the respondents, the researcher gave a careful explanation of the format, the length, and misunderstanding about the

survey questions while completing them To make sure that all students understood the

questions properly, the rescarcher could translate the questions into Vietnamese The students were asked to complete the questionnaires seriously within ten minutes in their classrooms after writing lessons

‘the second phase is interviewing ‘0 get better insights into research questions,

the researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 students randomly

selected from these classes To ensure the equality, the researcher prepared 50 pieces of

papers but there were only 15 ones containing “Yes” word for students to pick up In this type of interviewing, most of the questions are open-ended designed to elicit the

parlicipanis' perspectives wilhoul sensilizing Ihe parlicipants Lo any hypotheses of the

researcher ‘he interviews were carried out in the next writing lesson and recorded

wilh (he permission of the interviewers

5 Dala analysis procedure

Data analysis is nol a single descnplion of the dala collocied but a process by

which the researcher interprets the data Ihe data were collected and analyzed

qualitatively to address the research questions Regarding the questionnaire, these

answers to closc-crided questions were aualyzed one by one, automatically calculated

by Microsoft Lixeel, reported in percentages, and presented with table and chart for the clearer pr miation, nnd easier comparison and synthesis, All the results coll from

two sources were comprehensively analyzed and discussed in the next chapter Tindings and discussion Responses from interviews were also analyzed, explained and presented ina reader-friendlly way

Summary:

In a word, this chapter has justified the methadology applied in the present study by clarifying five aspects which are selling, participants, instruments, dala collection as well as data analysis procedure The next chapter analyses various kinds

of dala collected and inlerprelations are made with an allemmpl to answer the research

questions.

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION This chapter presents the research findings and discussion which answered the three research questions The results were mainly collected from questionnawe and interview from students The aim of this chapler ix surveying the attitudes of students toward peer feedback, describing the problems of the students that they often encounter when they give peer written feedback and proposing some solutions to these problems

1 Findings

Based on questionnaire and interviews, the researcher found some findings which concerned to two issues: the perceptions of students toward peer feedback, and the problems they faced with when they gave peer written feedback

LL Results from questionnaire

This section, which presents and discusses information from the questionnaire,

will be divided into two major parts, that is, the perceptions of students toward peer

feedback and the difficulties they encounter when they do peer written feedback

1.1.1 Students" perceptions on peer feedback

1.11.1 Students’ perceptions on peer feedhack in general

1 and Figure 2

1.1.1.2, Students’ perceptions on the benefits of peer feedback

Table 1: Students’ perceptions on the benefits of peer feedback

(Number of student)

Students can revise their writings effectively based on their friends | 28

correction and suggestion

Students can avoid all the corrected mistakes next time 6

Students can enhance their confidence in writing thanks to their friends’ | 11

21

encouraging tecdback

Students cart develop eritical thinking thanks to the poer’s feedback Students can know how to self-revise their writing in general 35 37

Table 1 showed the different opinions of students about the benefits of peer

feedback We can see that the majority of students (37 students) chose the option that they can know Lo self - revise their wriling afler peer feedback is applied in wriling class It was clear that peer feedback had a positive mmpact on student's learning autonomy Revising effectively the writing based on friends! correction and developing critical thinking were two benefits which students Inghly appreciated (28 students and

25 students respectively) On the contrary, only 11 students agreed that they could enhance their confidence in writing thanks ta their friends’ encouraging feedback and 6

students put ther choice in avoiding all vorrected mistakes next time It has uo doubt

that writing is a complicated process and is considered to be the most difficult skill

among four academic skills Therefore, that two options above were in the lowest rank

can be understood,

11.13 Students’ perceptions on the disadvantages of peer written feedback

Table 2: Students’ perceptions on the disadvantages of pcr written feedback

(Number of student) Peers feedback coniradicls my ideas 3

Peers’ feedback is not reliable 1

Peers’ feedback is too vague and difficult to understand 6

The peer’s feedback cannot help my writing improve 9

Table 2 was created for students who thought that peer feedback was not helpful

to them Based on table 2, most of the students admitted that peer feedback could not

help them improve their writing Clearly, it was not an effective method for them to boost their skill;

as a consequence, another method might be a better one to support them Two = third students (67%) found that (heir peers’ feedback is too vague and difficult to understand while 33% students reported that the peer's feedback is unclear/ too general In this case, it can be said that giving a full and comprehensible written

feedback seems to be a hard task [or students Hence, to make others fully understand

what message it is might be not simple Besides, 41% students gave the opinion that the feedback discouraged them when they received from their peers TL may be explained that there are too many corrected mistakes in the feedback and it might be full of different - colored correction spreading out These were the reasons why

students felt embarrassed and had no motivation to revise their writing when receiving

feedback A small portion of students (33%) put a tick on the contradiction of peer feedback on their ideas This figure revealed that 11% of student thought their peer feedback was not reliable It can be inferred that these students who had contradictory ideas and showed unreliable on peer feedback might be some of the students who are a

little better at learning than others

1.1.2 Difficulties that students encounter when they do peer written feedback

1 Strongly agree 2 Agree 3.Neutral 4 Disagree 5 Strongly disagree

23

Table 3: Difficulties that students encounter when they do peer wrillen feedback

5 Content ( ideas and expression) 18 30 |28 16 |8

6 Cohesion and coherence (organivaionandlikmg [6 10 |20 43 | 21

devices)

7 Lexical resource (vocabulary, word choice, word |32 46 |12 6 |4

form)

8 Grammar rage (structures, verb tenses, article) 30 44 |14 8 6

10 Giving general comments 24 36 |20 14 lố

*Form

Basing on table 3, the majority of students thought that form is an avoidable mistake (50% of students show disagreement and 30% of them strongly disagreed)

Meanwhile, the percentage of studonls have difficulty in thal aspect accounts for 4%

sương agreement and 6% agreement It can be referred that form might be not a big

problem for the student in wriling because they could compare wilh the given model

and check form easily Furthermore, table 2 also showed that 10% of students had the neutral idea

*Content

lable 3 showed that most of the students agreed content is considered an

obstacle (18% of agreement and 30% of strong agreement) It is possible that the

Vietnamese language may affect them, they carmot produce simple sentences but

meaningful as they expected On the other hand, 16% and 8% disagreed and strongly disagreed respectively that they did not get trouble in transferring the content

Contrary to form, the portion of students who have a neutral opinion of the content issuc (ideas and expression) accounted for a quile large portion (28%) Tn this

case, they seem to be confused and not self-confident in their ability of expression

* Cohesion and coherence {arganization and linking devices)

Basing ơn table 3, over 60% of students (43% disagreed and 21% strongly disagreed) reported that organization and linking devices were not their matter This expresses that students did not spend much time understanding the meaning of the conjunction as well as the cohesion of the text because letter wriling requires simplicity, clarity, and straightness; hence familiar linking devices are preferred using Tn: contrast, 16% of students showed their agreement about the difficulty in correcting

these errors while 20% of students were neutral

*Lexical resource

Most of English leamers recognized the importance of vocabulary im using language as the communication tool Ilowever, not many of them have an effective method of learning to accumulate enough a certain amount of vocabulary to serve their purposes Table 3 showed thal over 75% off studerils had difficulty in recognizing the

mustakes in term of vocabulary (word choice, werd form, and word order) It is

possible thal they could not choose [onal words as the requirement of Istler writing

(word choice) Moreover, word form is regarded as one of the most complex in term

25