Applying peer feedback in letter writing

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES ******************* NGUYỄN HÀ NGỌC ÁNH APPLYING PEER FEEDBACK IN

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

*******************

NGUYỄN HÀ NGỌC ÁNH

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 thư:

Những khó khăn và giải pháp đề xuất)

Field: English Teaching Methodology (applied program) Code: 8140231.01

HANOI - 2018

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

*******************

NGUYỄN HÀ NGỌC ÁNH

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 thư:

Những khó khăn và giải pháp đề xuất)

Field: English Teaching Methodology (applied program) Code: 8140231.01

Supervisor: Dr Pham Lan Anh

HANOI, 2018

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DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY

I am aware of and understand the University's policy on plagiarism and I declare that this thesis is my own work in the fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master at Faculty of Postgraduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, except for quotations, and citations which have been acknowledged

NGUYỄN HÀ NGỌC ÁNH

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

at the Faculty of Postgraduate Studies who are kind and helpful

I wish to express my sincere gratitude to my colleagues who helped me to find the necessary materials and gave me constructive comments

I 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

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LIST OF FIGURES/ TABLES

Figure 1: Students’ perceptions on peer feedback in 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

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ABSTRACT

Although writing is an important component of language, it is not easy for 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 feedback in writing letters of application because it is regarded as the initial step to show their talent and experience

as well as to leave the first impression on recruiters This thesis was conducted 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 attitude of students toward peer feedback as well as some difficulties 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 feedback; letter writing; letter of application

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii

LIST OF FIGURES iii

ABSTRACT iv

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1 The rationale 1

2 Research objectives and aims 2

3 Research questions 3

4 The scope of the study 3

5 The significance of the study 3

6 Methodology 4

7 Organization of the thesis 4

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: The Literature Review 5

I Theoretical framework 5

1.Teaching writing skills 5

2 Teaching letter writing skills and letter of application 7

3 Feedback and feedback in writing 7

4 Peer feedback in writing 10

4.1 The importance of peer feedback in writing 10

4.2.Types of feedback in writing 10

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4.2.1 Verbal feedback 10

4.2.2 Written feedback 11

5 Potential difficulties in giving peer written feedback 12

II Review of previous studies 13

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 15

1 Research setting 15

2 Participants 15

3 Data collection instrument 16

3.1 Questionnaire 16

3.2 Interview 16

4 Data collection procedure 17

5 Data analysis procedure 18

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 20

1 Findings 20

1.1 Results from questionnaire 20

1.1.1 Students’ perceptions on peer feedback 20

1.1.1.1.Students’ perceptions on feedback in general 20

1.1.1.2 Students’ perceptions on the benefits of peer feedback 21

1.1.1.3 Students’ perceptions on the disadvantages of peer feedback 22

1.1.2 Students’ difficulties that they encountered when giving peer written feedback 23

1.1.3 Students’ follow – up activities after receiving peer feedback 27

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1.1.4 Students’ expectations of using peer feedback in the future 28

1.1.5 Students’ opinions about solutions to overcome difficulties in giving peer feedback 28

1.2 Results from interview 30

2 Discussion 34

2.1 The reasons for these difficulties of giving peer feedback in writing were recognized 37

2.2 Recommendations for improving peer feedback as well as writing skills 39

PART 3: CONCLUSION 42

1 Recapitulations of main findings 42

2 The implication for teaching 43

3 Limitations of the study 43

4 Suggestions for further studies 44

REFERENCES 45 APPENDICES I APPENDIX I: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE I APPENDIX II: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS V APPENDIX III: THE RESULT OF INTERVIEW VI APPENDIX IV: SAMPLE OF STUDENT’S INTERVIEW VIII

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PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

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

as the language of global culture 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 to 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 the learner to have control over various factors Moreover, 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 vocabulary

Although strong writing skills may enhance students' chances for success (Alexander, 2008), the majority of Vietnamese students lack proficiency in language to become successful upon graduation Despite the fact that they spend years studying English, from primary to tertiary level, they are not capable of being fluent in English

As a consequence, fresh graduate students cannot create good impressions for 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 letter writing skills play an essential role in contributing to students' initial success in the society of modernization and industrialization However, writing a letter does not seem an easy task for most students A lack of letter writing

2 Aim and objectives

Aim:

The aim of this research is to figure out the difficulties or challenges that students often have when they do peer written feedback in letter writing in order to find possible solutions for the identified problems

Objectives:

This aim of the research is reflected through the following objectives Firstly, it 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 After analysis, some reasons causing poor writing might be discovered; then several potential solutions have been proposed to help them improve their writing letter skills

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3 Research questions

1 What are the perceptions of students on peer feedback?

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

3 What are possible solutions to help students overcome these problems?

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 students' difficulties in letter writing However,

to meet 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 study 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 critical understanding of students' difficulties when they do peer written feedback Although the study was carried out in an English center in Hanoi, it is believed 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 Furthermore, the researcher hopes that students will have more interests and motivation in letter writing to acquire proficiency in this skill

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6 Methodology

The study adopts a qualitative approach for data collection and data analysis In 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 at an English center in Hanoi And then, 15 students randomly selected were interviewed The purpose of the two methods is to explore the perceptions of students toward peer feedback and identify 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 topic, the aim, objectives, and research questions as well as the methods of the study It also provides the significance and scope of the study

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

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PART 2: DEVELOPMENT

This part is the core of the study which is divided into 3 chapters: Literature Review, Methodology, and Findings

Chapter 1: Literature review

This chapter is to provide a theoretical framework for the study as well as to review the related previous studies concerning writing in general and letter writing in particular

I Theoretical framework

1 Teaching writing skills

Writing skills play an essential role in modern life because of their purposes of communication and business Walsh (2010) demonstrates that the importance of writing cannot be denied due to its extensive use in higher education and the workplace Furthermore, writing is the best supportive tool to assist people to develop their ability using language and academic skills as well as communication skills It requires writers to gain enough knowledge of writing (topic and skills) and other skills (analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating) so as to 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 However, they vary in the sense of principles and techniques on the one hand, and they demonstrate merits and drawbacks on the other

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Product approach

Product approach is considered a traditional approach in which students imitate

a model text and are expected to follow the guided steps to construct a new piece of writing The 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 cohesive devices" Picas also shows four stages of product approach before students 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 taught to produce the product) Although learners 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 mainly "a process of discovery" In spite

of its strength, there still have been some limitations Hyland (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 feedback if they are not familiar with revision Thirdly, it could be time – consuming

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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 position; the greetings; the body of the letter and its purpose; the closing paragraph

and the writers' expectation from the addressee; the complimentary phrase and the signature Therefore, Fawcett (2005) presents 7 strategies for better writing Firstly, keep it short and to the point Secondly, make it clear, concise, and logical Thirdly, 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 the reader in the total 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 letter of application because it will be the first impression for recruiters to decide on their qualification

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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 achievement in their learning and establish specific learning objectives in the future In brief, a good and appropriate feedback can act as both an assessment for learning as well as an assessment of learning (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 concern others’ success in learning will pass their 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 to the development of writing skills The objective of corrective feedback is to help the learners identify problems with their products and they can use the correct form after feedback It should have an impact on students' attitude toward writing and their motivation for learning in 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 after a review of literature

Teacher’s feedback

Many teachers see 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 draft When providing feedback, different teachers may have different purposes when examining a student's work At this point, teachers should use feedback to try to reduce the gap between the

on student’s learning autonomy or the student’s monitoring of their learning processes Indeed, it enhances learners' confidence to accept the errors and boost them to invest effort into seeking 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 learning It promotes better thoughtfulness and an understanding of the content on the task given As a consequence, it can enhance lifelong learning for personal or intellectual development or social competencies Despite those benefits, it has several limitations that students need to be aware of It can be an obstacle 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 modern society leads to the shift of the teacher-centered model from learner-centered in language teaching; hence 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 learners to 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

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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 are free to exchange correction with each other without using professional and formal language Cole & Chan (1994) supports that feedback may not only show the learner's effort and performance but also increase encouragement and create an active classroom atmosphere

4 Peer feedback in writing

4.1 The importance of peer feedback in writing

It is obvious that using peer feedback offers several advantages for learners as well as teachers Firstly, it enhances students learning autonomy, cooperation, interaction, and critical thinking 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 to give comments on grammatical features Secondly, the 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 to formulate and respond to feedback so as to strengthen their writing

4.2 Types of peer feedback in writing

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

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 learners who will listen and reflect on what has been said (Sultana, 2015)

As a result, verbal comments assist students to find out what they have already known, identified gaps in knowledge and their learning goals In spite of these advantages, the oral comments give some certain drawbacks Firstly, it is time – consuming because it 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 speech to take note; as a consequence, they are not able to revise their writing correctly

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the specifics of the learning tasks and the student’s learning issues According to the study by Cheah & Tee (2016) and Danielle MacDonald of the Learning & Teaching Office’s Professional Development in Teaching Program, an effective written feedback consists of these following criteria Firstly, 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 includes a checklist which made it easier for students who are both writers and editors to revise their writing and understand what needed to be corrected Compared with written feedback, the checklist is much simpler because it is

a list 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 attention on the critical features of the particular task; hence teachers can design a variety of checklist to meet specific needs

5 Potential difficulties in giving peer written feedback in letter writing

Effective writing requires a number of things: 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 emphasis; and a careful choice of vocabulary, grammatical patterns, and sentence structures" (Hedge 1988) According to grading criteria of British Council for General IELTS Writing Task 1 (Letter writing), there are 4 main criteria: Task achievement; Cohesion and coherence; Lexical resource; and Grammar range & Accuracy

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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 features/ 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 use 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 flexibility and accuracy They have good control of grammar and punctuation with the majority of error – free sentences

II Review of previous 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 to carry out a new research or project

A study by Lin & Chen (2009) investigated the Effectiveness of Peer Feedback

at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, a National University in Taiwan, Republic of China The study was carried out within 8 weeks of writing training and peer feedback activities with 7 volunteers After 8 weeks of training 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

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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 English writing subject from peer’s cooperative activities of brainstorming, it should be applied in English 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 (SLWAI) and T-test as instruments to analyze data Results of the study have shown that the peer feedback group experienced significantly less anxiety than the teacher feedback group Similar to the above study, this research also revealed that peer feedback enhances the participants' attitudes towards writing and has an impact on increasing motivation through personal responsibility, and interest

A Vietnamese study by Pham Thi Hong (2016) investigated the practice peer written feedback in paragraph writing skills among the third-year students It seems 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 did 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

In conclusion, all the research mentioned above revealed several related 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

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into the difficulties of students when they give peer feedback in writing a letter of application Hopefully, this study will be important for learners 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 whichthe investigation of the students’ difficulties in applying peer feedback was carried out

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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

In the previous chapter, the literature related to the topic has been 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 instruments, research

procedure, and data analysis procedure

1 Research setting

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

in teaching English communication skills and TOEIC preparation for a certificate Students who attend the course vary from elementary, pre-intermediate to intermediate level However, students are requested to do a placement test in order to assess the approximate level of a student's knowledge of English 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 each course, teachers have their own teaching method and techniques Each 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 to the fact that the entrance exam to university merely 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

Part 1: student’s general information

Part 2: Question 1, 2, 3 survey the students’ perceptions toward peer feedback 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 peer feedback

Question 14, 15 discover the students’ expectation toward peer feedback in the future

Part 5: explores possible solutions to help students overcome those difficulties

3.2 Interview

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

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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 Vietnamese 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 The 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 questionnaire were distributed to the 50 students at an English center at the end of the lesson when they finished giving peer feedback as required after 3 practice lessons and returned in full 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 researcher 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 To 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 participants' perspectives without sensitizing the participants to any hypotheses of the researcher The interviews were carried out in the next writing lesson and recorded with the permission of the interviewers

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5 Data analysis procedure

Data analysis is not a single description of the data collected but a process by which the researcher interprets the data The data were collected and analyzed qualitatively to address the research questions Regarding the questionnaire, these answers to close-ended questions were analyzed one by one, automatically calculated

by Microsoft Excel, reported in percentages, and presented with table and chart for the clearer presentation, and easier comparison and synthesis All the results collected from two sources were comprehensively analyzed and discussed in the next chapter – Findings and discussion Responses from interviews were also analyzed, explained and presented in a reader-friendly way

Summary:

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

of data collected and interpretations are made with an attempt to answer the research questions

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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 questionnaire and interview from students The aim of this chapter is 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

1.1 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

1.1.1.1 Students’ perceptions on peer feedback in general

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Figure 1: Students’ perceptions on peer feedback in general

The first question was to find out students' general assessment of their peer feedback As being asked about the usefulness of peer feedback in their letter writing skills, 82% of students (41 students) agreed that peer feedback is useful while only 18% (9 students) of them hold a contradiction The two groups are required to answer the further question to clear up their choice Their explanations are illustrated in Table

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’

correction and suggestion

28

Students can avoid all the corrected mistakes next time 6

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

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encouraging feedback

Students can develop critical thinking thanks to the peer’s feedback 25

Students can know how to self-revise their writing in general 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 to self - revise their writing after peer feedback is applied in writing class It was clear that peer feedback had a positive impact on student's learning autonomy Revising effectively the writing based on friends' correction and developing critical thinking were two benefits which students highly appreciated (28 students and

25 students respectively) On the contrary, only 11 students agreed that they could enhance their confidence in writing thanks to their friends' encouraging feedback and 6 students put their choice in avoiding all corrected mistakes next time It has no 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

1.1.1.3 Students’ perceptions on the disadvantages of peer written feedback

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

(Number of student)

Peers’ feedback is too vague and difficult to understand 6

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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 their 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 for students Hence, to make others fully understand what message it is might be not simple Besides, 44% students gave the opinion that the feedback discouraged them when they received from their peers It 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

6 Cohesion and coherence (organization and liking

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

*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 students have difficulty in that aspect accounts for 4% strong agreement and 6% agreement It can be referred that form might be not a big problem for the student in writing because they could compare with the given model and check form easily Furthermore, table 2 also showed that 10% of students had the neutral idea

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*Content

Table 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 cannot 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 issue (ideas and expression) accounted for a quite large portion (28%) In this case, they seem to be confused and not self-confident in their ability of expression

* Cohesion and coherence (organization and linking devices)

Basing on 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 writing requires simplicity, clarity, and straightness; hence familiar linking devices are preferred using

In 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 learners recognized the importance of vocabulary in using language as the communication tool However, 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 that over 75% of students had difficulty in recognizing the mistakes in term of vocabulary (word choice, word form, and word order) It is possible that they could not choose formal words as the requirement of letter writing (word choice) Moreover, word form is regarded as one of the most complex in term