The effects of peer feedback on discussion boards on efl students writing performance m a 60 14 10

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE THE EFFECTS OF PEER FEEDBACK ON DISCUSSION BOARDS

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE

THE EFFECTS OF PEER FEEDBACK

ON DISCUSSION BOARDS

ON EFL STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics & Literature

in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in TESOL

By

NGHIEM THI THU NGA

Supervised by

DANG TAN TIN, Ph.D

HO CHI MINH CITY, DECEMBER 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE

THE EFFECTS OF PEER FEEDBACK

ON DISCUSSION BOARDS

ON EFL STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics & Literature

in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in TESOL

By

NGHIEM THI THU NGA

Supervised by

DANG TAN TIN, Ph.D

HO CHI MINH CITY, DECEMBER 2017

APPROVAL SHEET

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Firstly, I would like to express my deep gratitude and appreciation to my supervisor, Dr Dang Tan Tin, who gave me precious comments to help orientate my research focus and encouragement to continue doing my thesis As an experienced researcher, he was willing to offer help and advice when I encountered difficulties in conducting my research He had inspired my research idea about the application of Information Technology in English language teaching when I was taking his Computer-Assisted Language Learning course

In addition, I would like to send my special thanks to the Board of Examiner, including Dr Le Hoang Dung, Dr Pho Phuong Dung, Dr Nguyen Thi Hong Tham, Dr Tran Thi Minh Phuong, and Dr Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu for their invaluable comments during the time I presented my proposal I am also grateful to Dr Nguyen Thu Huong, and Ms Pham Ngoc Kim Tuyen for their special concern during the time I was shaping

my research title

Besides, I would like to acknowledge the detailed guidance and the assistance of the lecturers of the Faculty of Foreign Languages in the University of Technical Education They also gave me useful advice about the course content, the students’ characteristics and the teaching methodology when I started my teaching career as a novice lecturer in this university

I am also indebted to Mr Hoang Nam and Ms Lan Anh, my two dear friends, who gave me practical advice based on their teaching experience

Moreover, my research would not be completed without the participation of the students in the two courses Writing 2 - code WRIT120235_03 and Writing 3 – code WRIT220335_01 Thanks to these participants’ enthusiasm, I could investigate the effects of information technology on their language performance to help them make progress in learning English

I would like to thank my family members, who gave me financial and mental support to complete my MA program

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Blessed Virgin Mary for her miracles that are out of my imagination

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

The thesis entitled “The effects of peer feedback on discussion boards on EFL

students’ writing performance” is conducted under the supervision of Doctor Dang Tan

RETENTION OF USE

I agree to let the library of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City and the English Resource Center of the Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature to use my thesis for the purpose of reference

NGHIEM THI THU NGA

December, 2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements i

Statement of originality ii

Retention of use iii

Table of contents iv

List of abbreviations vi

List of tables vii

List of figures viii

Abstract ix

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the study 3

1.2 Aims of the study 7

1.3 Research questions 8

1.4 Significance of the study 8

1.5 Scope of the study 8

1.6 Outline of the thesis 9

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 10

2.1 Definitions of terms 10

2.2 Review of previous studies 18

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 35

3.1 Research questions 35

3.2 Research design 35

3.3 Research site 37

3.4 Participants 37

3.5 Research instruments 38

3.6 Data collection procedure 40

3.7 Data analysis procedure 46

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 49

4.1 Analysis of data 49

4.2 Discussion of results 116

4.3 Findings 118

4.4 Summary 118

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 120

5.1 Conclusion 120

5.2 Pedagogical implications 121

5.3 Limitation of the study 122

5.4 Recommendation for further study 126

REFERENCES 128

APPENDICES 141

Appendix A: The tests 141

Appendix B: The Pre-test and the Post-test scores of the Experimental Group and the Control Group 142

Appendix C: Criteria for peer feedback 146

Appendix D: Topics for discussion boards 151

Appendix E: The questionnaire 157

Appendix F: The interview questions 160

Appendix G: The interview transcript 161

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BA: Bachelor of Arts

CG: Control group

DB: Discussion board

EFL: English as a foreign language

EG: Experimental group

ELT: English language teaching

FCE: First Certificate in English

HCMUTE: Ho Chi Minh University of Technical Education

ICT: Information and Communications Technology

IELTS: International English Language Testing System

LMS: Learning Management System

MA: Master of Arts

MOODLE: Modular-Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment

SPSS: Statistical Package for Social Sciences

TOEFL: Test of English as a foreign language

VN: Vietnam

LIST OF TABLES Table 1: The Foreign Language Faculty’s points according to each criterion Table 2: The comparison between the IELTS score and the Faculty’s scores Table 3: The IELTS band scores

Table 4: The IELTS band scores and the equivalent of in-class scores

Table 5: Benefits and limitations of peer feedback on discussion boards

Table 6: Data collection procedure

Table 7: Test of normal distribution

Table 8: Statistics of skewness, kurtosis, min, max

Table 9: Test Statistics

Table 10: Test Statistics

Table 11: Test Statistics

Table 12: Test Statistics

Table 13: Students’ writing level and previous experience

Table 14: Results of the 26 questionnaire items

Table 15: Results of the first discussion board

Table 16: Results of the second discussion board

Table 17: Results of the third discussion board

Table 18: Results of the fourth discussion board

Table 19: Results of the fifth discussion board

Table 20: Results of the sixth discussion board

Table 21: Students’ opinions about the advantages of peer feedback on discussion boards

Table 22: Students’ opinions about the disadvantages of peer feedback on discussion boards

Table 23: Students’ opinions about the solutions to improve peer feedback on discussion boards

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 The components of the concept “attitudes” and their relationship with gender and English learning (Eshghinejad, 2016)

Figure 2 The structure of a discussion board

Figure 3 The four steps of the treatment

Figure 4 The research design

Figure 5 The steps of data collection procedure

Figure 6 The steps of data analysis procedure

ABSTRACT

Blended learning, a mix of traditional class and online class, facilitates the synchronous (real-time interaction) and asynchronous (delayed interaction) communication for teachers and students Discussion board, a tool of a learning management system built around a Moodle site, is widely used in the blended learning mode as a platform for students to discuss with their friends However, there are very few studies investigate specifically peer feedback on discussion boards as many of them are about blended learning in general or traditional peer feedback in particular This situation creates a research gap, which is an urgent need to study about the combination between peer feedback and discussion boards This study examined the effects of peer feedback on discussion boards on EFL undergraduate students’ writing performance It also investigated students’ attitudes in terms of behavior, cognition and emotion It was a study followed a quasi- experimental design with one experimental group under the treatment and one control group The quantitative and qualitative data were collected from four research instruments, namely the writing tests (pre-test and post-test), the questionnaire, the interview, and the discussion boards The findings show that the experimental group has significantly increased their writing scores after the treatment In addition, they also show their positive attitudes towards peer feedback on discussion boards and propose some solutions to enhance the treatment Maintaining students’ motivation during the course as one of the pedagogical implications is crucial to assure the effectiveness of the treatment

Keywords: attitudes, discussion boards, EFL, peer feedback, writing performance

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

In English teaching and learning, writing is considered as the most challenging and difficult skill for teachers and students (McGuire, 2010) As a matter of fact, writing is the last skill to be instructed according to the sequence Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing in the audio-lingual method (Hubbard, 1983) because it is a productive skill synthesizing the language knowledge gaining from the first three skills Through writing skills, students present the information they acquired from Listening, Speaking, and Reading skills to construct mature language communication (Do, T X

D & Nguyen, T H N., 2016) Therefore, writing has its important effect on other skills Since writing has the ultimate position and receives a great deal of researchers’ concerns, it has not received proper attention so far due to subjective and objective reasons from both the teachers and the students Writing tasks tended to be the last activity after teachers and students have passed other activities in the course books

(English Language Files as an example) As it is the last activity, writing tasks may be

treated as homework Students might choose to do it or not to do it at home Teachers might not have enough time inside class or outside class to check students’ written papers while they must teach many classes with many tasks making them busy like: designing lesson plans, teaching, doing research, designing tests, becoming the invigilators and test examiners Apart from this, students also consider writing as the toughest, the most boring and the most discouraging skills because they have to dedicate their time in practicing writing This thought may somehow prevent them from learning writing skills effectively and efficiently (Huynh, T T L., 2016) Although writing is a tough skill, the survey of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, quoted in the ETS report, realized that about 99% of academic staff from

433 institutions claimed that writing is among the critical intellectual skills for students

In a traditional writing class, students often write their papers at home, then they bring them to class with the hope that teachers will correct all the mistakes for them Next, the great amount of papers becomes a heavy burden for teachers (Shokrpour, Kheshavarz & Jafari, 2013) It seems to be very difficult for teachers to manage the time

to correct all the students’ papers so that they could give immediate feedback Therefore, teachers tend to delay their feedback (Lavolette, Polio & Kahng, 2015) At that time, students might forget which mistakes they have committed Although teachers might give students detailed writing feedback, the issue that students do not write their revised papers is popular As a result, students could not make use of the teacher feedback and might continue making the same writing mistakes in their papers

Teachers may use peer feedback to supplement for traditional teacher feedback

by asking students to look at their friends’ drafts and correct the mistakes for themselves It can be conducted in pairs or groups, and students can only see and give comments on several papers of their classmates This somehow reduces the teachers’ workload, but it also has some problems, like the students’ preference of teacher feedback, students’ anxiety about losing face, the quality of students’ comments, and the time management in class (Charoensuk, 2012)

Apart from conducting peer feedback in the classroom, educators can select an alternative kind of writing feedback with the support of computer devices to replace the disadvantages of the traditional ones With the online peer feedback, teachers will save time for the peer feedback activity in class because students can access the online class

to do this activity at any time they want Students can give quality peer feedback to their classmates when they have more time Face-losing is no longer a problem when students

do not have to confront each other like in the traditional class They only see their names

on the discussion boards, so they can give truthful comments for their classmates It is unlike in the traditional class when students may not feel comfortable when they work with the classmates who are not their close friends

It is believed that peer feedback on discussion boards may be contradictory to the disadvantages of peer feedback because all the mistakes may be shown publicly Nevertheless, it may raise students’ awareness towards their writing mistakes, self-correct these mistakes, and enhance their writing level

Following this current trend, the thesis will study peer feedback in the online environment to contribute a small aspect in the diverse results of previous similar studies The first chapter will further elaborate this issue by discussing about the

background, the research aims, the research questions, the originality, the limitation, and the structure of the thesis

1.1 Background to the study

1.1.1 The integration of Information and Communications Technology (ICT)

in English Language Teaching (ELT)

The trend of integrating ICT in ELT has changed the way of teaching writing skills by providing to teachers many substitute options to correct students’ writing mistakes in their online writing assignments such as using computer-mediated corrective software like Criterion, Grammarly; Track changes in Microsoft Word, pdf files; peer collaboration in Google Docs, Wikis, (Ur, 2012); or blended learning

Blended learning, a mix of a traditional face-to-face class and a virtual online class, is used to maximize the potential of learning inside and outside class A Learning Management System (LMS), the online part of blended learning has provided to teachers a lot of tools such as blogs, wikis, and forums (discussion boards) to facilitate students’ language learning Blogs may be used for reflection, wikis for collaborative activities and discussion boards for discussion as in the study of Miyazoe & Anderson, (2012) Blended learning can also become the solution for a large class, teaching time limitation, and the insufficient interaction among teacher and students and students with students (Dewi, 2014) In this meaning, the teaching and learning can be extended outside class in the form of distance education (Nguyen, T C A., 2014)

However, these learning platforms also possess some disadvantages and constraints The use of computer-mediated corrective software is too expensive for teachers if they want to apply it for small groups of students The softwares like Grammarly and Criterion are only available for teachers if their institutions purchase them to use the Premium account as advertised in their websites (According to Grammarly’s websites on October 6th; the price of Grammarly service was $29.95 USD per month) Wikis allow every student to correct the mistakes directly in their own writings Blogs somehow belong to private possession of each student Track changes allow students to write comments in bubbles to correct the mistakes on their peers’ writings, and students only do a simple job that is clicking to agree with the changes provided in the Track changes bubbles

In the above applications such as computer-mediated corrective software, wikis, blogs and track changes, students do not have many opportunities to give reasons for any changes in their drafts In Track changes, students can only view their writings in the private file In contrast, the use of peer feedback on discussion boards in teaching writing skills grants students the chance to consult their friends’ writings, to evaluate their friends, to explain for their revised drafts

Most previous studies generally investigated blended learning without specializing in any of its tools or investigated only about traditional feedback The researcher could find a great deal of online studies like them However, there are very few studies combine peer feedback and discussion boards In addition, their research designs did not require students to explain for the changes in their revised step Furthermore, it is still unclear about the effectiveness of discussion boards in teaching writing, the way to use discussion boards appropriately, the cultural aspect in students’ perceptions because of the contradictory results yielded, the small scope, the limited duration of treatment Therefore, these issues create the gap for this study

1.1.2 The situation of students’ writing performance in this study context

In Vietnamese EFL context, students’ writing problems derive from the late exposure of writing skills and the highly emphasis on grammar from secondary school

to high school and even to tertiary study According to the precedent years from 2006

to 2014, each English test of the university entrance examination usually consists of 80 multiple choice questions, which focuses on grammar, reading, vocabulary, pronunciation without leaving any space for listening, speaking, or writing Therefore, teachers paid more attention to grammar-translation method to achieve the goal

“teaching to the test” and students concentrated in drilling the English grammar with the expectation that they could enter their target universities Students’ poor writing performance was explained by the traditional usage of multiple choice test questions, which do not express their true language competence (Nguyen, N A T., 2016) Although students have learned English from grade sixth to grade twelfth, they could not produce good written texts due to the great emphasis on grammar, structural patterns and error correction according to conventional high school education (Dang, T V D., 2014; Hoang, Y P & Nguyen, T Q P., 2016)

From the past two years 2015 and 2016, paragraph writing has been added in the content of the English test when the high school graduation examination and the university entrance examination was combined into one examination However, grammar accuracy is still the core issue that students tend to look at in their paragraphs and skip other writing elements such as organization, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical range (structural variety) Furthermore, students also experience high writing apprehension when they are required to produce their own writing The negligence of other writing criteria and the writing anxiety are two major challenges preventing Vietnamese EFL students from improving their writing performance Therefore, these obstacles need to be overcome by finding an appropriate treatment, and modern technology may become a potential platform to assist teachers and students by changing their perception towards teaching and learning English writing skills

1.1.3 The combination of peer feedback and discussion boards in teaching

writing skills

After detecting students’ writing problems, another question posing for EFL researchers and educators is finding the effective online teaching practice in enhancing students’ writing performance

Discussion boards, or forums are the popular online platform for people to present their viewpoints about a topic or an issue Peer feedback relates to the action of correcting or giving comments about a classmate’s work The combination of peer feedback and discussion boards in teaching writing skills become the treatment of the study because discussion boards provide to students an online environment to exchange their ideas, which is suitable for conducting peer feedback Students can look at all the writing drafts of their classmates and give remarks in this platform

In this study, discussion boards are chosen because the researcher purposefully wants students to discuss their classmates’ drafts to provide suggestions and arguments for adopting or rejecting these suggestions She also wants the students to self-correct their writings from the comments below the writings Students should not be directly corrected in their writings like the cases of track changes and wikis Moreover, the

researcher would like to increase the voice of “shy” students in the traditional classroom

so that they can participate in doing peer feedback on discussion boards

In many previous studies, the combination between peer feedback and discussion boards in teaching writing skills has been widely applied in two popular forms The first type is the use of synchronous discussion boards, which means that teachers conduct a writing class in a multimedia room or a lab room equipped with computers and the Internet connection Students will give comments on their peers’ writing works at the same time in the online environment

The second type is the application of asynchronous discussion boards Students are required to do this assignment at home by giving online comments on their peers’ writings at their own convenient time In contrast to the former type of discussion board, the latter type accepts the peer feedback not in the same time Students can have more time to think about their friends’ writings before giving quality peer feedback (Dewi, 2014), which can be more time-saving than the synchronous discussion boards if students do not know what to comments, especially when their friends’ writings do not have any grammar mistakes For this purpose, the thesis explores the effectiveness of asynchronous discussion boards rather than synchronous discussion boards

Due to the lack of face-to-face interaction, sincere comments are expected to make peer feedback become meaningful for students As students may experience writing apprehension for their mistakes, discussion boards provide a “safe” environment for them by learning how to assess their friends (Song & Usaha, 2009) Finally, the time in traditional class may not seem enough for the writing activities, which is an ongoing process needing time to develop and make progress

According to Hyland & Hyland (2006), computer-mediated peer feedback is among many unsolved areas of feedback (teacher feedback, peer feedback, computer-mediated feedback), so the investigation of peer feedback on asynchronous discussion boards also belongs to these research fields In addition, many previous studies yielded conflict results in terms of the experimental groups like the treatment has positive result

or has no effect on the students’ grades The uncertainty in these studies’ outcome is thought to have originated by lacking evidence to prove the appropriateness for the application of such technical platforms in ELT Moreover, few studies have investigated

the use of peer feedback on discussion boards in teaching writing, especially in Vietnamese context where English is taught as a foreign language These issues create the research gap, which is an urgent need to conduct this empirical study

The rationale for conducting this research is because peer feedback has many advantages According to Charoensuk (2012), peer feedback motivated students to invest more efforts to write, increase critical thinking skills and knowledge about grammar and vocabulary While in the teacher feedback, the teacher is the sole reader

of students; in the peer feedback, the classmates are also the readers Thus, students should be careful when they post their writings for the whole class to read and give comments Do, T H (2016) also stated that inspiring lessons and meaningful tasks are the critical factor to help students attain their potential Peer feedback on discussion boards is believed to achieve this criterion It compensates for the traditional writing instruction by creating the learning environment for students to have model essays and engage themselves in the activity according to the idea of Mc Kay (1984), quoted in

Do, T H., 2016) Although the online assignment is independent work, students can choose the essays they want to read High proficiency students can develop critical thinking skills and low-level students can benefit from the comments of their friends (Dang, T D T., 2016) Students can find information from dictionaries and the Internet and share their opinions on discussion boards The treatment peer feedback on discussion board is both the collaborative and corrective work for students Students’ attention of their progress may be higher thanks to the scores they receive from their revised paragraphs (Nguyen, N A T., 2016)

1.2 Aims of the study

There are two main purposes in conducting this research The former one is to investigate the effectiveness of peer feedback on discussion boards on Vietnamese EFL students’ writing performance in terms of 4 IELTS criteria: task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy The latter one is to explore students’ attitudes towards the use of peer feedback on discussion boards in teaching writing skills in terms of its advantages, limitations and suggestions for improvement In other words, the aims of the study are to test the effectiveness of peer

feedback on discussion boards as an effective teaching methodology to solve students’ writing problems

1.3 Research questions

This research is carried out to answer these research questions:

1 To what extent does peer feedback on discussion boards improve EFL students’ writing performance?

2 What are students’ attitudes towards peer feedback on discussion boards?

1.4 Significance of the study

Since the nature of discussion boards is to facilitate discussion, it is widely used

in teaching speaking rather than teaching writing skills because students can present their opinions, ideas about a variety of speaking topics Therefore, few studies investigated the use of discussion boards and comments in teaching writing skills, especially in Vietnamese EFL context To compensate for that research gap, this study combines asynchronous discussion boards and peer feedback in teaching writing skills The significance of this study is expressed in its ability to address these above-mentioned problems Firstly, it focuses on investigating only discussion boards rather than blended learning in general Secondly, students not only type comments to suggest corrections but they also give reasons for accepting or refusing peers’ suggestions in their subsequent drafts Finally, it also provides some information about the effectiveness of discussion boards on students’ writing performance, emphasizes on the cultural aspect in students’ opinions about this teaching practice and the way it should

be applied in teaching writing skills

1.5 Scope of the study

To have a profound insight of the effects of peer feedback on discussion boards

on students’ writing performance, the researcher conducts a study with two English major classes of Bachelor program at the University of Technology and Education of

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMUTE) during one semester (15 weeks)

The researcher chooses the University of Technology and Education because this university is currently using Moodle LMS Students major in English are selected because they are learning English writing skills in their training program The researcher omitted the option of In-serviced students because they do not have much time to do

the online assignment and they may not like to do the pair work or group work Therefore, students major in English may be a reasonable choice for this study

As mentioned above, this study focuses on asynchronous discussion boards because students may need more time to read and to give quality comments for their friends at their own convenience of online time Therefore, the information exchange is limited in only text comments on the discussion boards so that students can read the writing drafts, write comments in formal academic English, and read comments The selection of text-based comments is suitable to the research because its focus is investigating the effectiveness of discussion boards in teaching writing skills

1.6 Outline of the thesis

This thesis consists of 5 chapters:

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the study with the background, the research

purposes, the research questions, the significance and the scope

Chapter 2 analyzes the literature review related to the study including the definitions

of terminologies and the review of previous studies conducted in foreign context and Vietnamese context

Chapter 3 presents the methodology of the study It covers the research design, the

research site, the participants, the research instruments, the data collection and the data analysis procedure

Chapter 4 clarifies the results of the study by dealing with the data analysis, discussions

of results, and findings

Chapter 5 summarizes the conclusion, some pedagogical implications, limitations of

the study and proposes suggestions for future research relating to the use of technology

in teaching English writing skills

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definitions of terms

2.1.1 Peer feedback and peer feedback on writing:

Based on its emphasis aspects, peer feedback has many terms like peer review, peer response, peer critiquing, peer editing (Chaorensuk, 2012) The reason for its different name depends on the nature of the context it is used According to Charoensuk (2012), peer feedback related to “the act of students giving comments for their classmates’ writing, while peer response related to the content, and peer editing refers to the correction of grammatical structures.”

Nicol, Thomson & Breslin (2014) defined peer review as “a reciprocal process whereby students produce feedback reviews on the work of peers and receive feedback reviews from peers on their own work.”

According to some authors (Dang, T D T., 2016; Hoang, Y P & Nguyen, T Q P.,2016), peer feedback can be defined as the support and the negotiation between students and their classmates by presenting the written texts evaluating peer text, giving feedback and receiving feedback Wakabayashi, 2013 defined the feedback as the reader’s input to the writer to provide information for revision

In his paper, McCarthy (2017) differentiated peer feedback and peer assessment by giving the Topping (2000)’s quotation The former is “the process of students’ giving comments about their friends’ papers” while the latter is “evaluating and giving their friends’ a grade” Yu & Lee (2016) quoted Liu & Hansen (2002) the definition of peer feedback as “the use of learners as sources of information and interactants for each other

in such a way that learners assume roles and responsibilities normally taken on by a formally trained teacher, tutor, or editor in commenting on and critiquing each other’s drafts in both written and oral formats in the process of writing” In their opinion, the term peer feedback consists of the product and process of the whole activity

Like feedback, peer feedback also has the important role in helping students’ recognition of grammatical errors, writing focus, and their response to the correction process (Trinh, N T., 2014) According to Kumar & Stracke (2011), (quoted in Vergara

& Lee, 2014), feedback support students in the realization of the gap between their current and design competence

In this study, peer feedback is the act of typing and posting comments on the discussion boards to give remarks about the classmates’ essays The current platform is the discussion board and it mainly belongs to collaborative learning and communication among peers, hence, the term peer feedback is the most accurate one to be chosen The researcher used the term “Peer feedback on discussion boards” because she chose discussion boards as the online platform for her study Peer feedback is the action

of students giving comments for their classmates’ writing drafts In the study context, the researcher wanted to emphasize the treatment by using the term “peer feedback on discussion boards”, which means that the peer feedback was conducted on discussion boards, not the peer feedback in traditional face-to-face class Peer feedback on discussion boards is totally different from peer feedback on blogs or peer feedback on Facebook and peer feedback on wikis

Apart from the online platform, the term “peer feedback on discussion board” is used to refer to the two actions that students do to give their comments about their friends’ online essays (posts on the thread) The first action is giving the peer comments, which mean that students give comments for their friends’ essays The second action is giving the responsive comments to reply their friends’ peer comments about their essays With these definitions, peer feedback is conducted in two-way between the reviewers and the writers of the essays They might keep giving responses about the essays until they found out that the essays’ problems were solved It is also parallel with

Li (2010), quoted in McCarthy (2017) that students acted as “assessors” and “assesses” Assessors are the students giving comments and assesses are the students receiving comments and make some modifications in their writing

As discussion board has two types: synchronous (real-time interaction among students) and asynchronous (students can do the activity in their own pace) (Jose & Abidin, 2016), the researcher focused on the latter form because the former form could not be conducted due to the lack of facilities inside the current classroom and the limited classtime that the research was provided by the institution Furthermore, students did not have enough time to write a complete essay and conduct a traditional face-to-face

peer feedback Those were the reasons why asynchronous discussion boards are more prominent than synchronous discussion boards Therefore, asynchronous discussion board is appropriate for learners to have more time to think and write peer feedback for

their classmates’ essays

2.1.2 Writing performance

According to Chomsky (1965), the term performance means “the production of actual utterances” and it involves “doing something with the language” Therefore, writing performance means students produce their real and actual piece of writing, how they use the English language to write their writing products

The term “writing performance” was assessed by many writing criteria:

According to the old way of assessing writing skills, the Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Technology and Education used a set of criteria, namely: (1) An introduction paragraph with a hook, a background, and a thesis statement (1.5 marks)

(2) Three body paragraphs with a topic sentence, specific supporting sentences, and

a concluding sentence for each (3 marks)

(3) A conclusion with a summary of the main points, a prediction, or a recommendation (1 mark)

(4) Unity and coherence in each paragraph and within the whole essay (2 marks) (5) Correct use of grammar and vocabulary (2.5 marks)

In the semester 2016-2017, the Faculty adopted the 4 criteria of IELTS with an emphasis in analytic scoring, not holistic scoring like the previous one The shift between using the old way of assessing writing skills and the new way mark an importand transition or milestone in connecting the academic knowledge of English writing skills with the real IELTS test

The IELTS task 2 Writing band descriptions:

According to the IELTS task 2 Writing band descriptions, British Council divided

the writing assessment into 4 criteria, namely:

Criterion 1: Task achievement

Criterion 2: Coherence and cohesion

Criterion 3: Lexical resource

Criterion 4: Grammatical range and accuracy

Criterion 1, task achievement, means to what extent students attain the task requirement It is the standard to examine that students’ essays do not go off topic It also means that students have written enough elements of the essays, namely the introduction, the body and the conclusion This criterion is about the development of ideas in the essays, whether the ideas are fully developed or not

Criterion 2, coherence and cohesion, is about the connection of ideas in the students’ essays, whether the former sentences have a smooth flow of ideas in the latter sentences

or not Students can use pronoun reference and sentence connectors to achieve the coherence and cohesion, but abusing these sign-posts or using less transitions might not

be encouraged by the IELTS examiners

Criterion 3, lexical resource, is used to measure the abundant of students’ vocabulary accumulation If students use less common and academic words with correct usage and register, their essays might be graded with higher points than the essays that only use common words

Criterion 4, grammatical range and accuracy is used to assess the level of various kinds of sentences that students used, namely the simple sentences, the compound sentences, the complex sentences, or the compound-complex sentences The more accurate and complicated the sentence structures that students use, the higher bands of scores that they achieve Apart from these 4 basic sentence structures, students can use various grammatical structures to create the interesting feature for their essays and to reduce the monotonous of the repetitive sentence structures The accuracy is the accurate grammar usage, or the precise language use of students in their essays The more accurate the grammar in students’ essays, the higher scores they will receive The appendix will provide more detailed information about the assessment with the requirement for each band scores

According to the Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Technical Education, the 4 IELTS criteria was divided into 5 criteria, namely the task achivement, coherence-cohesion, lexical resource, structure variety (grammatical range), and grammatical accuracy Each of the five criteria is considered equally with

the points range from 0 to 2 Therefore, the total scores for all these five criteria are 10 points

Table 1: The Foreign Language Faculty’s points according to each criterion

The range of IELTS score (from 0 to 9) for each criterion will be converted into the Faculty score (from 0 to 2) like in the following table:

Table 2: The comparison between the IELTS score and the Faculty’s scores

However, such conversion cannot assure the accuracy for the current research because there is no difference between the two points such as 8 and 9, or the points with decimal numbers like 8.5 If the researcher decided to convert the score by taking the decimal points with three numbers after the dot, the difference will be too small One more problem is that, if the researcher kept the IELTS score, the reliability of the results will not be assured because students cannot increase their scores quickly after learning only a-30-period-course, while 1 increasing point of IELTS score is equaled to 200 hours of self-practice Students were expected to have 4 IELTS scores at the beginning

of the course and they would attain 6 IELTS scores at the end of the course Therefore, the researcher treated 4 IELTS scores as 2 points and 6 IELTS score is equivalent to 10 points to measure exactly the changing of students’ writing scores

Table 3: The IELTS band scores

According to Eshghinejad (2016), behavioral aspect of attitudes relates to the behavior and reactions of people in specific contexts Cognitive aspect of attitudes refers

to the students’ beliefs about their acquisition of knowledge and their comprehension

of the language learning process Emotional aspect of attitudes involves students’ feelings, emotions, interests and preference

In this study, the questionnaire to measure students’ attitudes is divided into three segments related to behavioral, cognitive and emotional aspects of attitudes

During the course, the attitudes of students might change (Wang, 2014) This study will investigate students’ alteration of their attitudes from the beginning to the end of the course If students have positive attitudes towards the treatment, they will learn more than students have negative attitudes (Wang, 2014)

2.1.4 Moodle and Discussion boards

Moodle is the acronym of the term Modular-Object Oriented Dynamic Learning environment, created by Martin Doujamas in 1999 According to Jose (2016), it is a Learning Management System that is used popularly in academic institutions for facilitating students’ interaction on asynchronous discussion forums

Currently, there are two other kinds of learning management system, namely Moodle and Blackboard The reason why the researcher chose Moodle in the study was because the University of Technology and Education was currently using Moodle as their electronic learning environment

Discussion boards, or forum, online bulletin board are the same name of a tool in the Learning Management System According to Figure 1, a discussion board is composed of many threads, which is the written work of each student Each thread has

many comments In this research context, there are 6 discussion boards, each discussion

board compose of 1 thread with the topics The thread will consist of the students’ posts, relatively the original drafts, the peer comments, the responsive comments, and the revised essays

According to Beal, 2010, quoted in Jose, 2016, the online forum indicates the online bulletin board in which the students-writers post his or her comments about a topic and expect students-readers to give comments about their mutual interest topics As online

forums create a virtual platform for students’ interaction and collaboration, students can post their comments, reply to others and discuss some problems regarding to the posts

Figure 2: The structure of a discussion board

2.1.5 The 4 steps: original draft, peer comments, responsive comments, revised draft

The draft is the original post of students’ essays and also the thread on the discussion board Before writing the drafts, students should write an outline and plan They may write their written paragraphs or essays on paper and type in the Microsoft Word file or Kingsoft file before posting on the discussion boards

In this study, peer comment means the comment that students write to give remarks for their friends’ online essays on discussion boards Peer comments were written by the students-reviewers, not the students-owners of the essays

In this study, responsive comment is the comment that students-writers who wrote the essays type on discussion boards to reply to the peer comments that they had received from their classmates The responsive comment is the response, the reply of the students-owners of the essays In the responsive comments, the students owners of the essays could address the reviewers that they had read the comments, thank the reviewers, accept the reviewers’ comments, ask for clarification in the peer comments, explain the ideas in their essays, refuse the reviewers’ comments and give explanations

Thread 1 (original draft)

Peer comment

Responsive commentPeer comment

Responsive commentRevised draft

Thread 2 (original

The revised draft, or revised essay, is the new and second version of students’ original essay after students have received the peer feedback and the teacher feedback Students will combine the teacher feedback and the peer feedback to correct their writing mistakes and write the revised essays

Figure 3 The four steps of the treatment

2.2 Review of previous studies

2.2.1 Foreign context

There are a lot of foreign studies investigated blended learning in general rather than focusing on a specific feedback like peer feedback on discussion boards The experimental studies yield contradictory results in the effectiveness of peer feedback on students’ writing skills

Mahmoud (2012) investigated the strategy-based peer assistant in EFL writing as another option for traditional peer correction However, his paper lacked the qualitative and quantitative data to prove that the results were right In addition, it was more like a bibliographical study of the previous works of other authors

Charoensuk (2012) studied the relationship between an English writing classroom and Asian cultural issues when adopting peer feedback That study was more prominent than other studies because of its integration with the cultural context to show the advantages and disadvantages of peer feedback It also differentiated the difference among peer feedback with other terms like peer feedback, peer editing and peer response Asian students might not be familiar with peer feedback in terms of the cultural contexts when they were not confident in their friends’ ability and the durable belief that teachers’ feedback was more effective

Mustafa (2012) studied about students’ opinions of writing feedback In his case, the study was about two folded of feedback: about feedback of feedback In their study, students thought that feedback had no impact on their learning Students desire in

Step 1:

Original draft

Step 2: Peer comments

Step 3:

Responsive comments

Step 4: Revised draft

learning writing skills in that feedback should be given to them in time, in detailed, and

in comprehensible manner

Srichanyachon (2012) conducted a survey to find out students’ attitudes towards teacher and peer feedback In contrast to other studies, the respondents showed their neutral attitudes about these two feedback modes Although some of them approved teacher feedback, peer feedback also had a supplemented role in students’ writing progress

Moradi (2012) studied the effect of online peer feedback on the Iranian students’ academic writing ability The findings showed that there was no statistically significant difference between the group performed online peer feedback with the group performed offline peer feedback

Miyazoe & Anderson (2012) combined a mixture of blogs, wikis, and forums in an EFL blended course in teaching writing skills The results showed that students emphasized their most preference in wikis than the other two online learning platforms Ciftcy & Kocoglu (2012) studied the effects of e-peer feedback on Turkish EFL students’ writing performance They had one control group with face-to-face peer feedback in class and one experimental group with online peer feedback Although the two groups had improved their writing skills, the writing performance of the experimental group was higher than the control group

Zheng (2012) studied the process of peer feedback activity and the teachers’ role in that process Zhu (2012) studied the students’ participation of peer response as an activity The findings showed that each student has different motivation of participating

in this learning process, which guided their attitudes and beliefs in their perspective

In foreign context, many researchers have made a lot of attempts to investigate the use of discussion boards in teaching writing such as Ghahari and Ameri-Gokstan (2013), the use of peer-computer mediated corrective feedback to support EFL learners’ writing (AbuSeileek & Abualsha’r,, 2014), even compare between the effects of face-to-face and computer mediated peer review on EFL writers’ comments and revisions like Ho (2015) However, the way they do research to find out students’ choices are to compare between drafts, comments, and revisions and conduct interview or teacher-students conference, which meant that they did it indirectly

Shaarawy& Lotfy (2013) used asynchronous blended learning in general to teach writing skills Although the control group had higher writing proficiency level than the experimental group in the pre-test and both of the two groups have increased the writing level in the post test, the experimental group had higher level of writing ability than the control group in the post test

Yoke et al (2013) investigated the use of online corrective feedback in Academic Writing in Malaysia Although the two groups had improved their writing scores, but the experimental group with online peer feedback had higher increase level than the control group with traditional corrective feedback Most of the participants show the preference of doing online feedback

Wakabayashi (2013) studied the effects of peer feedback on reviewers’ own writing Most of the participants perceived the usefulness of peer feedback on their own writing However, the minority regarded it as “not so useful”

Salih (2013) investigated patterns and expectations of peer response to students’ L2 writing Unlike the researcher’s expectations of peer response on grammatical correction, the peer response emphasized on the clarification of peer feedback

Celik (2013) conducted a research about the unspoken social dynamic in an online discussion board group The findings showed that although the social dynamic was presented in the discussion boards, the students might not approve it

Shulin (2013) focused on teacher’s beliefs and practices towards peer feedback in the writing classrooms The findings showed that each teacher has dissimilar beliefs as well as different usage of this teaching practice in their class and they also practiced their belief in teaching writing

Mwalongo (2013) studied quality of peer feedback and students’ perceptions of it as

a peer learning tool in asynchronous discussion forums The results indicated that peer feedback on asynchronous discussion forums was a useful tool for formative assessment Students showed positive attitudes towards the treatment However, the participants also raised their concerns towards the bias when conducting peer feedback Susanti (2013) studied students’ perception towards the effective feedback practice

in the large EFL writing classroom context The results showed students’ preference in

receiving the feedback from both the lecturers and their peers and that oral peer feedback was more effective than written peer feedback

Xia, Fielder & Siragusa (2013) implemented a case study about the way to achieve better peer interaction in online discussion forums The findings showed that there was

a relationship between students’ frequency of postings with their final marks, which meant that the more active students participation in online forum, the higher marks that they got If students performed multiple roles in the discussion boards as reviewers and writers, they would gain higher marks than others

Abuseileek &Abualsha’r (2014) used peer feedback in combination with

computer They divided the treatment into three groups: track changes, recast

feedback, and metalinguistic feedback The result showed that students who received computer-mediated peer feedback had higher writing scores than the control group.Altstaedter & Doolittle (2014) did a research to study students’ perceptions of peer feedback The findings showed that there was no statistically significant difference between trained and untrained students towards peer feedback Students expressed their preference in receiving peer comments about their papers rather than reading and giving comments to their peers The participants liked to experience their role as readers and noticed their classmates’ writing mistakes However, they disliked peer feedback due

to its unrealiability in terms of quality and lengthy face-to-face conference

Arini and Mohammad (2014) in Thai TESOL journal, presented the use of peer editing and revising strategy to enhance students’ writing ability They concluded that peer editing and revision were effective for their students’ writing because in applying peer feedback, students noticed the mistakes in language use of their friends and then realized their writing mistakes

Choi (2014) studied the online peer discourse in the writing classroom Among the types of online peer interaction that Choi classified, general comments and constructive content discussion formed the majority

At the same year, Chen (2014), studied about the technology-supported peer feedback in ESL and EFL writing classes However, their study had the form of bibliographical research that summarized the characteristics of other studies about the

integration of technology and peer feedback, the 2 modes synchronous and asynchronous peer feedback

Huh & Lee (2014) questioned the relationship between the role of peer response with students’ revision quality The findings showed that students wrote longer and better-quality essays after revision

Nicol et al (2014)’s study listed out the benefits of peer feedback in writing skills for students’ own work as well as their peers Particularly, students’ peer feedback was more comprehensible than teacher feedback, and the multiple peer comments could improve students’ writing ability The participants of the study showed their positive attitudes towards peer feedback, specifically more than a half of them rated the peer comments were from good to excellent However, a minority of them disagreed in terms

of peer feedback quality when they rated fair and poor

Parthasarathy (2014) studied peer feedback in an ESL writing classroom However, his paper only listed the advantages and disadvantages of this teaching practice without presenting any quantitative data to show that students have improved their writing skills after the treatment

Rodgers et al (2015) investigated students’ perceptions and responses to teacher assistant and peer feedback The participants viewed teacher assistant’s feedback was useful and they also differentiate very clearly between useful and useless peer feedback based on the time, the quality and the efforts of their classmates when giving peer feedback

Sukumaran and Dass (2014) researched about the use of peer feedback in an English

as a Second Language Writing class Their findings showed that students also had positive attitudes towards the treatment and the past experience had no effect on their negative attitudes towards peer feedback

Yol (2014) also investigated students’ perceptions towards peer feedback in ESL writing classes The study showed that peer feedback technique has modified students’ experience towards peer feedback The treatment did not have any effects on students’ writing scores, but it might change their perceptions

Wang (2014) studied students’ perceptions of rubric-referenced peer feedback on EFL writing Wang conducted the study in 36 weeks and called it as a longitudinal

study The results showed a sharp decrease on students’ attitudes about the usefulness

of peer feedback It might indicate the fact that if peer feedback was applied repetitively during a long time, students might get bored with it, though it is an effective way for students to enhance their writing skills The findings were also the same for lexical, syntactical and grammatical accuracy Five factors influenced students’ responses were their knowledge, their limited English proficiency and their attitudes towards the treatment, the time constraints, and students’ interpersonal relationships with their peers

Yu & Lee (2015) studied students’ motives for participation in group peer feedback

of L2 writing The results showed that students’ motives have a close impact on their participation in peer feedback

Wang (2015) investigated how proficiency-pairing affects students’ peer mediated revisions The results indicated students’ change in both local (grammar and vocabulary) aspects as well as global aspects (content and organization)

Wanchid (2015) researched about the sequences of feedback type on students’ perceptions and preferences They focus on paper and pencil peer feedback, self-correction and the combination between Facebook and peer feedback The results showed that students in the group has the sequence Facebook peer feedback, self-correction, paper pencil peer feedback has higher mean score than students in the other two groups with sequence self-correction, paper pencil peer feedback, Facebook peer feedback and paper pencil peer feedback, Facebook peer feedback and self-correction This meant that sequences of written corrective feedback also played the important role

on students’ writing performance

Tsai, Liang, Hou & Tsai (2015) focused on gender differences in face-to-face and online discussion and found out that gentlements are not as active as ladies in both modes

Tai, Lin & Yang (2015) explored the effects of peer review and teacher corrective feedback on EFL students’ online writing performance They concluded that the group receiving both teacher feedback and peer feedback have made more progress than the group receiving only teacher feedback in the treatment This was because students’

awareness in writing mistakes was raised when they did peer feedback with their friends

Roseli & Umar (2015) discovered that in an online forum discussion, students developed both knowledge construction levels and cognitive skills

Razak & Saeed (2015) investigated peer revision of writing in a Facebook group Students made many changes in grammar form The students were free from stress when conducting peer response because Facebook was a user-friendly platform Lee (2015) investigated students’ perceptions towards inter-feedback and intra-feedback during the peer feedback in second language writing Results from the questionnaire showed that students preferred the adoption of intra-feedback, the adoption of teacher feedback only and the integration of intra-feedback mode with teacher feedback

Ho (2015) researched about the effects of face-to-face and computer-mediated peer review Students made more global revisions in terms of content and organization than local revisions (grammar and vocabulary) Students adopted many comments from the peer review in the two modes

Hansson (2015) listed out the benefits and difficulties in using peer response for writing in the EFL classroom Demirbilek (2015) investigated the integration between peer feedback and social media platforms like Wiki and Facebook The participants responded that they have benefited from the peer feedback on Facebook and wikis There was no difference in students’ responses between Facebook and wikis Students also had positive attitudes towards both kinds of platforms

Alnasser and Alyousef (2015) investigated Saudi students’ favor for giving and receiving peer feedback on their writing There was no statistically significant level of difference in the results of the questionnaire in both micro and macro levels Respondents’ preferred conducting peer feedback in these two levels rather than separating each of them in the interview

Jose and Abidin (2016) used forum discussion for the writing promotion with an experimental group with synchronous forum and a control group with asynchronous blog Although the strength of this study was the collection of qualitative and quantitative data, it did not investigate the use of asynchronous discussion boards to be

compatible with asynchronous blog in a short treatment They stated that online forum discussion has no statistically significant effect on the EFL learners’ writing performance in terms of linguistics complexity or the written output, but the qualitative data collected showed that students have positive attitudes towards the treatment

Yu & Lee (2015) studied the role of learners with low English proficiency in Peer feedback of second language writing In their study, they emphasized that students with high proficiency can benefit from giving peer feedback and students with low proficiency can profit from receiving peer feedback from their high proficiency classmates That study was conducted with in class peer feedback and the whole process was video-recorded The result indicated that the three lower proficiency level students’ comments focused on language form, content and organization Most of their comments were perceived as useful by their group members The factors that influenced the low proficiency students contributed in their peer feedback were their mother tongue (L1,

or native language), the positive relationship among students and the appreciation of peer feedback and the peer feedback training

The two above-mentioned researchers Yu & Lee also wrote an article about the research trends of peer feedback and second language writing from 2005 to 2014 In their opinions, the effectiveness of peer feedback with teacher feedback and self-feedback, benefits of peer feedback to peer feedback givers and receivers, computer-mediated peer feedback, peer feedback training and cultural issues were related to the

7 current research trends Specifically, the peer feedback conducted via computer, whether on discussion forums, blogs or wikis in two modes synchronous and asynchronous, can be an alternative for traditional face-to-face peer feedback

Yu & Hu (2016) conducted a study to find out the answer for the question: “Can higher proficiency L2 learners benefit from working with lower proficiency partners in peer feedback?” 2 over 3 high proficiency students agreed that peer feedback is a useful activity, while 1 person disagreed with the usefulness of this activity, although their classmates gave him useful comments The factors that affect higher proficiency students’ learning from peer feedback activity were their beliefs about peer feedback and the role of L2 proficiency, students’ motives and goals for peer feedback, and the use L1 in the peer feedback

Tai (2016) investigated of the effects of Collaborative online learning on EFL Learners’ Writing performance and self-efficacy Students had to give peer feedback of their classmates’ draft The study’s results showed that students’ scores were higher in the post-test in terms of content, organization, grammar, diction, mechanism and holistic EFL learners’ self-efficacy showed that if they were confident in their writing, they might not make any improvement

Patchan, Schunn & Correnti (2016) assessed the reliability and validity of peer review of writing in high school classes They conducted a double-blind peer review process, which means that both the authors and reviewers did not know each other The result showed that students disagreed with each other about whether their essays followed the standard English Students were able to give judgement towards the high proficient writing papers with the low proficient ones Both teachers and students viewed that the treatment was useful to them These authors assessed the effect of peer feedback features on students’ implementation rate and quality of revisions The results indicated that each student received an average of 40 comments, and only 41% of them were implemented In the revised draft, students tried to implement one third of the comments

Meihami & Rajmzoo (2016) studied the challenges and solutions of peer assessment and self-assessment Learners’ lack of assessment literacy and instructional problems were the challenges of peer assessment The solutions lied in the teachers’ participation

of the training to qualify themselves in their assessment literacy and instructions Kurihara (2016) raised the question of the effects of peer reviews in enhancing students’ writing abilities Her research was conducted with an experimental group receiving peer review with teacher feedback and a control group receiving only teacher feedback The findings indicated that peer review was effective in both students’ writing performance and their attitudes towards the treatment

Ion, Barrera-Corominas & Tomàs-Folch (2016) conducted their research to analyze the type of feedback students use and their perceptions towards peer feedback of their current and future learning The results were that both students and teachers felt the usefulness of feedback Students tended to provide more peer feedback on task achievement, motivational aspects, structural and formal language forms

Colpitts (2016) did a research to investigate Japanese students’ perceptions of peer corrective feedback in an EFL classroom The results implied that students found that they learned more in giving peer feedback than receiving peer feedback Students had positive attitudes towards the treatment

Baker (2016) claimed that peer review is a strategy to improve students’ writing process In her study, the process of peer review was emphasized so that students’ learning of writing was maximized Findings showed that the participants submitted their writings earlier than the deadline, the students-reviewers offered formative peer feedback, students changed the meaning of the sentences in their revised drafts

Tsao, Tseng & Wang (2017) conducted a study to find out the effects of writing anxiety and motivation in students’ judgement of teacher feedback and peer feedback The results showed that students highly appreciated teacher feedback more than peer feedback and that peer and teacher feedback should be utilized together rather than excluding one from another However, their study did not tell readers about the integration of peer feedback and an electronic platform In the same year, Ranjbar & Behzad (2017) investigated peer scaffolding behaviors in revising the written task with the concept of Vygotsky’s Zone’s Proximal Development in which lower-level students can learn from their peers Their study was also about traditional face-to-face peer feedback with two students Mc Carthy (2017) did a research with three kinds of mode: teacher-student feedback, students’ peer feedback in class and students’ peer feedback online Most students preferred receiving feedback from multiple resources One third

of the participants preferred to receive feedback from teacher and tutors in class, 12% favored the online feedback and 2% liked the peer feedback in class 100% students claimed that they received quality feedback from the teaching staff, 87% received quality online peer feedback and 55% from peer feedback in class Akmal (2017) studied the impacts of using online discussion forums in enhancing students’ writing skills The result showed that students made progress in the mean score (from 76.47 to 80.68) and the syntax between the beginning and the end of the course It also indicated that “discussion forums could improve students’ writing skills.”

2.2.2 Vietnamese context

In Vietnamese EFL context, most studies investigated the traditional peer feedback rather than modern peer feedback with the assistance of information technology Specifically, Huynh, M H (2008) investigated the impact of online peer feedback on EFL learners’ motivation in writing and writing performance in his Master thesis In his study, the research tools consisted of a questionnaire about students’ motivation, a pre-test, a post-test and interviews He required his students to use Dropbox to post their drafts, then they used his feedback sheet to evaluate each other’s writings, wrote comments to give some sugestions and to revise their drafts Then, he downloaded the students’ final drafts, gave comments and grades for students, and used Dropbox to upload students’ papers with his comments and grades Then, students compared between the peers’ comments and teacher’s comments The researcher did not investigate and clarify the students’ comments on 6 discussion boards of the Dokeos Learning Management System of Can Tho University

Nguyen, T T L (2012) also tried to create motivating activities in test preparation writing classes in Vietnam Peer correction was adopted by her and it was just one of the small activity among other writing activities to prepare her class before the IELTS and TOEFL test

Trinh, Q L & Cao, H Y (2013) worked on the role of peer feedback giving in students’ argumentative paragraphs Le, M H (2014) studied the role of corrective feedback in Vietnamese high school student writing She wanted to find out the differences in the use of teacher feedback and peer feedback in students’ written products Most of the students agreed that peer feedback was useful to them

Recently, Nguyen, T H (2016) conducted a qualitative study about students’ perceptions towards group coaching peer feedback in class Dang, T D T (2016) also researched students’ attitudes towards the noticing-based collaborative activities However, these studies were limited in traditional face-to-face peer feedback conducted with students’ groups in class with pen and papers (students’ writing, worksheet, checklist) in oral and written form Moreover, the last two studies lacked students’ scores as quantitative data to prove the effectiveness of their teaching methods

In Vietnam, there were few studies about peer feedback on discussion boards Most

of them are about other tools like Facebook and portfolio Specifically; Hoang, Y P